


simulacrum

by recryption



Category: Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Found Family, M/M, Post-Canon, Redemption, Supernatural Elements, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24750898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recryption/pseuds/recryption
Summary: After the Game, Gordon Freeman thought that he'd finally have a moment of peace -- some time to adjust to the new apartment Black Mesa had gifted him, talk with the Science Team in a situation where none of them were actively worried about dying, take care of Joshua, and finally live like, y'know, a normal person.Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he can escape the Game's influence -- and, equally as unfortunately, somebody he's familiar with doesn't seem exactly like theywantto, either.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 86
Kudos: 501
Collections: HLVRAI Fics





	simulacrum

The apartment is too nice, first of all.

It's not something that Gordon ever thought he would be complaining about -- that something is too _nice_ , especially not after the hell that the past few weeks at Black Mesa had been for him -- but the fact remains that after the Game, he'd been pulled to the side at Tommy's birthday party, forced to listen to the cryptic nonsense of the G-Man who did his absolute damnedest to make Gordon feel terrible about the fact that, well --

"The four of you will be permanently… how should I put it... _discharged_ from the Black Mesa premises," he says. His serious voice doesn't match the cheap party decorations pinned around them, the rapidly-cooling plate of Chuck E. Cheese's pizza on the table between them, and Gordon feels the tonal dissonance all too acutely. He _wants_ to leave the conversation so he can go back to watching Dr. Coomer try to game (and break) the arcade machines, but every time he tries to make eye contact with one of them, silently begging _save me_ with his eyes, Tommy's there, with a doe-eyed look and his two index fingers pressed together, a pleading expression that screams _please hear him out_ and Gordon has no choice but to sigh and turn back to whatever the hell the G-Man was trying to tell him.

"That's -- that's good," he replies, laughing nervously. "I mean -- I mean, not like Black Mesa was already basically fuckin' defunct, especially after whatever the hell _happened_ in there with us, and with Benrey, I mean--"

"The… _Game_ , as you call it," the G-Man finishes.

"Right!" Gordon smiles sardonically. "The -- when you told me that everyone was following a _script_ , in a _game_. Let me just, just cast aside _all_ of my skepticism, especially dealing with _you_ , to believe that."

"Trust me, Mr. Freeman, it… was not exactly _my_ decision to reveal _anything_ to you," the G-Man replies, pinching the bridge of their nose and letting out a long-suffering sigh.

"Then whose--"

The G-Man looks at a point past Gordon's head, and Gordon looks back as well, following his gaze. Tommy's giving him a double-thumbs-up and smiling widely. He doesn't need his question answered out loud.

"The point is, my friend, that with the Resonance Cascade having left Black Mesa in... less-than-admirable condition, we have to discuss what comes next."

"And what does _that_ mean, exactly?"

"It means that a… place in the universe has been scratched out for you, Mr. Freeman."

"A place in the--"

"If things go without a hitch, of course."

"Are you telling -- are you telling me to _fuck around and find out_ , what the _fuck_ \--"

"You'll have plenty of time to… fuck around and find out, if I may use… your crass wording."

"Man, I'm going to fucking --"

The next thing Gordon sees is a flash of bright green light, then a blank white light, then a _warm_ yellow light, and Gordon opens his eyes to see the sun, rendered in gloriously high quality, hanging above his face and beaming directly into his eyes. He winces, groans, and sits up -- in the middle of a field of grass. There's an address scrawled in Sharpie across the palm of his left hand. The people that walk by him with their kids and dogs and groceries give him odd looks, whispering questions about _cons_ and _cosplays_ and Gordon realizes that _oh fuck, I'm still wearing my HEV suit in the middle of a park in fuck-nowhere suburbia_.

Goddammit, that eldritch-otherworldly asshole of a being didn't even let him grab another slice of shitty rat pizza before he kicked him out of Tommy's birthday party.

He drags himself to his feet, feeling his muscles ache in protest, and makes hasty apologies and mumbles explanations to any of the strangers within earshot as he stumbles through the city. There's just enough money in his pocket to hail a taxi, which drops him off at the foot of a tall apartment complex, with a kind receptionist who informs him that a room had already been rented for him, the month's been paid, here's the key, have a good one. He doesn't even have to struggle with the lock to get it open. The door opens to a fully-furnished, too-clean apartment -- living room, kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, one for him and one where Joshua is sleeping like Gordon'd never disappeared --

There's even an old, beat-up crowbar on the kitchen counter with a note attached to it, written in perfect, nearly-robotic print: _Good luck getting your suit off_.

Gordon thinks, _Well, this is a suitcase that I'm fine with never unpacking._

He grabs the crowbar to start working at the metal plates of his suit so that he can finally take a goddamn shower.

\---

Time after the game flows like water through Gordon's fingers -- every hour seems to soothe his wounds, but altogether, they pass by too quickly for him to even try and savor their coolness, especially when compared to the panic and stress and death and _un_ death that'd come with the Black Mesa Incident.

The first day, Gordon takes stock. He has enough food in the fridge and in the pantry to last him about a week before he'd have to go grocery shopping. He has new clothes for both him and Joshua, so he wouldn't have to worry about _that_ for a while, at least. He has a phone with four mystery numbers registered on it that he doesn't even want to think about calling yet. He has a big check from Black Mesa tucked away in his wallet, a bank account that looks relatively well-kept, and, somehow, a great credit score. He has a fucking passport that, thank God, isn't expired yet. He has a CD shelf of classic 90s hits and Linkin Park albums. Gordon thinks that whatever's happening, it _has_ to be too good to be true.

The second day, Gordon resituates himself. The G-Man, apparently, had made him a Facebook account, and he looks through years of photos that he doesn't remember taking, reads through conversations that he doesn't remember having, looks at profiles from friends that he doesn't remember meeting. He's getting emails from a university that he's… apparently an assistant professor at. He remembers how to use basic kitchen utensils and appliances in order to make some grilled-cheese sandwiches for both himself and Joshua because honestly, he didn't exactly possess the mental fortitude to prepare anything that required anything more than _put cheese and bread in toaster oven_ , wrestles with Joshua for half an hour to convince him to take a bath, and stays up late, scrolling through Twitch streams to try to find one that was just monotone enough for him to fall asleep to. In that moment, he's struck by the strange mundanity of the whole situation. He recognizes the streamer's usernames -- but at the same time, he doesn't. There's an odd sense of _jamais vu_ to the whole situation that makes him feel out-of-place in his own goddamn apartment.

The third day, there's a knock on his door, and Gordon opens it to--

"S-Sunkist, stop!" Tommy laughs, and Gordon almost jumps up to hug him for how good it is to see someone that he finally recognizes.

"It was a fucking pain to track down your address," Bubby complains, immediately casting a critical eye over Gordon's apartment the minute he walks in. "Jesus Christ, Gordon, Tommy's instincts are quite literally bulletproof."

"Hello, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer says, as brightly as ever, and for a moment Gordon's face falls because that was the same scripted inflection that he _always_ used whenever his AI was acting up but then the three of them (and a dog) sweep ceremoniously into Gordon's living room, moving more fluidly than Gordon thinks he's ever seen them move before, and he knows that they're just as real as anything else in his stupid too-clean apartment is.

"Wh-- how did you guys even get here, of all places?" Gordon says, struggling with the apartment door as he tries to focus on both locking it shut while making sure that his three team members didn't immediately ravage his kitchen. "I mean-- I thought the guy, Tommy's dad, when we were at the party, he told me that he'd done something--"

"This is very new for us too, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer judiciously inspects the couch before he sinks into it, cross-legged and straight-backed as always. "I, for one, did not expect to receive a physical form! I thought that there was nothing out there!"

"Y-yeah, and I got my dog, Sunkist," Tommy says, rocking on his heels as he flaps his hands excitedly, eyes flicking rapidly around Gordon's living room like he's trying to take in the whole thing at once. "Look, Mr. Freeman! It's him -- I told you, Sunkist is the best dog, I'm so happy I have him --"

"He's gorgeous," Gordon laughs, surveying his now-full living room. Dr. Coomer's already settled in, flicking through the limited channels on the television (the G-Man couldn't even get him the premium subscription, goddammit), while Bubby looks through Gordon's CD shelf, making _tsk_ ing noises under his breath whenever he gets to an album that he doesn't quite approve of. "I mean -- yeah, you guys were controlled by the -- the script, so I mean --"

"It's a very strange experience, Gordon," Dr. Coomer says, nodding sagely. "I'm glad to have had the opportunity to go through it."

"H-how have you been, Mr. Freeman?" Tommy grins. "This -- this place for you, I like it, I like it a lot!"

"It's -- I mean, it's great, Tommy," Gordon says, genuinely. And really, it _is_ great, now that he's here with the team that he'd come to see as _his_ team over the course of the Game, especially now that he's safe without the threat of weird aliens or Benrey constantly on his tail, with a job and, admittedly, a very nice apartment, and his --

"What is all _that_ racket?" Bubby complains, as the sound of a child crying trickles through the apartment walls. Gordon stifles a curse under his breath, motioning for the room to stay quiet, as he runs into Joshua's bedroom to soothe him. Well, better that they find out sooner, rather than later -- it wasn't like it'd be exactly easy to hide an entire human child from them.

"Y-you actually have a kid?" Tommy gasps, his eyes shining, as Gordon walks back into the room with Joshua in his arms.

"Yeah, you saw his picture in my locker," Gordon says, proudly. "Joshua, remember?"

"Your boy is beautiful, Gordon," Dr. Coomer says, getting to his feet and politely holding out his hand like he's expecting a handshake from the toddler. "He looks much better in person!"

"This is Dr. Coomer," Gordon murmurs, and Joshua burbles with laughter, grabbing Dr. Coomer's fingers. "And Tommy, with Sunkist, his dog, and then Bubby, even though I'm still not sure that's his real name --"

"It's Dr. Bubby, to this little man," Bubby says sharply, crossing the room to stare down seriously at Joshua. "I'm not sure why you would assume that I'm lying, right in front of your kid, Gordon. That's pretty fucked up."

Gordon winces. "Can we not--"

"I'll do whatever I fucking want, Gordon. Are we having lunch or not?"

"Oh my God, Bubby, I'll get it done," Gordon groans, while Joshua laughs and Sunkist paces excited circles on the floor underneath them and Gordon thinks that _hey, maybe everything_ will _turn out fine._

\---

"Fine cooking, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer says, waving his sauce-covered fork in the air, and Gordon swells with praise while at the same time desperately trying to ignore the fact that he's pretty sure there's a fresh stain of tomato sauce on his ceiling fan.

"Just -- followed the instructions on the box," Gordon laughs. It's almost fascinating to watch his team at the kitchen table. He'd never seen any of them really eat before -- not like they needed to, during the Game itself -- but now they'd be forced to deal with the everyday, ordinary life that Gordon had always taken for granted. Tommy pushes all of his pasta onto one side of his bowl. Bubby stabs his food with his fork like he's trying to break the bowl along with everything else. Dr. Coomer puts his napkin on his lap and eats like he's at a fancy restaurant -- but he doesn't bother to put his utensils down every time he makes one of his grand, dramatic gestures. "You guys do have somewhere to stay, right?"

"I was dumped in an apartment with a phone and money," Bubby complains, while Gordon tries to hold back the urge to ask Bubby if he wants a paper plate instead of a ceramic one because he's pretty sure he's going to somehow find scratches all over it when he does the dishes later that night. "I mean, I was born in Black Mesa, and I didn't even get a Wikipedia article about how to pay taxes or anything. It's fucking unbelievable."

"There's a child at the table, Bubby," Dr. Coomer chides, before reaching over to pat Bubby on the shoulder. "But yes, Gordon, things are going surprisingly well! I'm helping Bubby adjust --"

"--not like I need him," Bubby mutters--

"--but otherwise, I do believe that we all are in a similar situation as you are!" Dr. Coomer. Gordon notices that the hand he has on Bubby's shoulder tightens. "We've been made physical, through some of the mysterious workings of the Game itself, and I must admit, I am very thankful for that!"

"I -- I'm just glad to be here with all of you!" Tommy says, smiling. "I mean -- I thought I was an orphan, but it turns out I have a dad, and a dog, and --"

" _Was_ it your dad that put us here?" Gordon seizes the opportunity to get some of his questions answered. He wipes Joshua's face with a napkin, smiling softly at how enamored he seems to be with Sunkist, sitting patiently on the floor next to his high chair. Gordon pointedly ignores the fact that Tommy seems to be discreetly feeding Sunkist scraps of meat from his bowl.

"He -- he said you played the Game well --"

"Well?" Bubby interrupts, scowling. "We didn't even get the high score!"

"There was a scoring system?" Gordon asks, incredulously.

"Could've done it _faster_ , at least."

"I mean, we all almost _died_ trying to get whatever -- whatever score we _did_ get, so I mean --"

"Ah, but you were never in any real danger, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer says. "I don't believe that any of us were -- you were essential to finish the story, while we were merely game constructs that'd been programmed to feel pain!"

"...Dr. Coomer, that's horrifying--"

"Well, we should just be thankful that we don't have to deal with that anymore!" Dr. Coomer beams, and Gordon honestly isn't sure whether he's talking about _being a game construct_ or _feeling pain_.

"It's -- I think it's good, though," Tommy chimes in. "I think we all did a great job!"

"Yeah, freeing you guys from the script was definitely a bonus," Gordon says, breathing a sigh of relief. If Tommy said everything was good, then he could rest assured that everything _was_ good. "We can just -- we can just live now, huh? Without being bothered? God, I hope that's the case."

"Oh, stop complaining about the Game, Gordon," Bubby interrupts exasperatedly. "And please tell me what brand of pasta this is. Human food is so fucking good, I can't believe they never gave me anything but nutrition mush in my tube."

"Don't sw-- wait, Bubby, did you say--"

"Black Mesa Copyrighted Nutrition Mush!" Dr. Coomer preemptively answers. "You can read all about it on Wikipedia!"

"Oh, you're fu-- _reaking_ with me, right now, there's no Wikipedia page on _nutrition mush_ \--"

"I've got -- I've got it right here," Tommy says helpfully, already passing his phone around the table, and Gordon groans and puts his head in his hands but he's laughing, laughing harder than he thinks he's laughed in a long time, and, even if he'd never admit it, thanks the G-Man for whatever he'd done to let him see his friends and his son outside of Black Mesa again.

\---

Three of the four numbers on Gordon's phone are the numbers of the other members of his Science Team. Bubby had been the first to pass along the information, calling Gordon's number at three in the morning and waking him up to the blaring chords of Dr. _Fucking_ Feelgood playing on his phone and Gordon blearily wonders when the G-Man had decided who got what ringtone before he decides that, out of all of the weirdly-specific things that the G-Man had done to him, oddly-fitting ringtones were the least of his concerns.

"You're the second person I've called," Bubby says, his voice sharp even through the static of the telephone line.

"Huh," Gordon intelligently responds.

"Dr. Coomer was the first -- to make sure that these phones work. Goddammit, new technology is so fucking difficult to work with."

"What's my ringtone on your phone?" Gordon asks blearily, fighting the urge to drift back off to the soft ASMR sounds of Bubby mumbling to himself and messing around with papers on his side of the call. _Wasn't Bubby a nuclear physicist?_

"How would I know?" Bubby snaps. "I called _you."_

"Wait, I'll just call you back," Gordon mumbles. "In the -- in the morning, though, I think, so you can tell me later."

"Asshole, it's barely even three --"

"Fuck you, you don't have a kid," Gordon manages to mutter in reply, before he passes out again the minute he hits the _end call_ button.

According to Bubby, his ringtone is Bubblegum Bitch. According to Tommy (who, in matters like this, he objectively trusts more), it's Mr. Brightside, which, y'know, he'd take as an act of grace. He calls each of them later that day, feels some sense of comfort knowing that they were all alright and just trying to resituate themselves in the weirdly-normal world they'd been thrown into, and then steels his nerves before he presses the last number because goddammit, he knew that it had to be Benrey, there wasn't anyone else that it could be.

He pushes the button, waits for an answer --

\-- but all that he gets in response is a flat dial tone.

Gordon waits for somebody to pick up, but after a minute or two, he's gotten sick of the annoying monotone and hangs up. Even though he'd never admit it, he pumps his fist in the air, whispers _fuck yes_ under his breath quietly enough that Joshua wouldn't hear him from where he's playing in the living room, and deletes the contact off of his phone.

\---

Gordon wakes up to the loud sound of crashing pots and pans in his kitchen and his left hand is on his stump of a right arm, steadying it like he would steady a gun, before he thinks, dumbly, _Right. It's not like that anymore._

He reaches for his phone on his bedside table, instead, and curses when he finds it dead. Then he grabs for the crowbar hidden just underneath his bed -- at least that's there. He steadies his breath, creeps out his bedroom door. The kitchen lights still aren't on. Goddammit, Black Mesa had invested in an apartment for him but didn't invest in locks that actually fucking worked right --

There's a dark figure, hunched over in front of his open pantry. Gordon freezes, but the shadow doesn't seem like it's noticed him yet. He raises the crowbar above his head, counts to three, and bites the bullet and rushes forward to bring it down on the intruder's head --

"Whoa, hey, what're you doing here?" they say, grabbing the crowbar that Gordon had swung with all of his strength in _mid-fucking-air._

"Oh, fuck off," Gordon hisses, and his eyes have adjusted enough to see Benrey, their eyes gleaming in the darkness like cat's eyes, staring at Gordon like they're trying to bore a hole through his skull with just their gaze, dressed in their stupid vest and helmet from the Game and absolutely caked in dirt and blood and God-knows-what-else --

"That was pretty mean," Benrey comments flatly. They shrug, and, in a very slow and deliberate motion, take their spare arm and sweep it across one of the pantry shelves, sending food tumbling to the ground underneath them. Some of the cans break on impact. Gordon wants to clock Benrey across the jaw.

"How the _fuck_ did you get in here?"

"I dunno," Benrey says. They look impassively at the mess they'd just made, and then go back to staring blankly at Gordon. "I tripped."

"You fucking tripped into my --" and Gordon wrenches the crowbar out of Benrey's grip and swings it into their side and expects to meet the dull give of flesh--

The crowbar passes harmlessly through them and Benrey, seizing the opportunity, shoves Gordon face-first to the floor and Gordon feels the sharp crack of his glasses as they ram into the bridge of his nose. The taste of iron is heavy in his mouth.

"That was pretty mean, Feetman," Benrey says, dully, planting their now-solid boot on Gordon's back and pushing him into the mess of canned foods on the ground. "I mean, 'm not even -- I didn't even get invited to your party, can you believe that? Can you believe that."

"What the hell are you _talking_ about?"

"I wouldn't rate that game highly on the app store."

"Benrey, I swear to _God_ if you don't fucking --"

"Huh?"

Gordon drops the crowbar, twists his arm around, grabs Benrey's one solid ankle, and pulls them to the floor and he hears Benrey's stifled "oh _fuck_ " as he scrambles to his feet, grabs a stupid shitty knife from his stupid shitty knife block and he doesn't even know why he's bothering with physical weapons anymore because whatever the hell this Benrey was made of was definitely _not_ physical but at least it makes him feel better to be brandishing a knife instead of just relying on his one good hand.

"Get out of my fucking house and _stay_ out of my fucking house," Gordon says, slowly, stressing every word. "I don't know what you want, but I want you _out_."

Benrey's eyes flash like car headlights, their carefully-flat expression twisting into a nasty scowl. "Wha -- you can't tell me what to do, you're not my boss."

"I fucking killed you once --"

"Stupid idiot baby doesn't wanna talk, doesn't wanna chill out with me --"

" _What_ could there be to even talk about?"

Benrey is mutinously silent for a heartbeat -- two -- almost as if they're struggling with their words --

"My Playstation Plus subscription," they finally spit out.

Gordon blinks in surprise and Benrey's on him immediately, knocking the knife out of his hand and the breath out of his lungs and sending him skidding backwards across the apartment floor and he's paralyzed, for a second, the ceiling spinning above him as he tries to catch his breath.

"I'm fuckin' -- _auuuuugh,_ stupid Meanman, can't even _fffuckin'_ listen to me for a second," Benrey complains, blurry in Gordon's field of view and Gordon can't tell if it's the concussion he's pretty sure he has or if the edges of Benrey's figure are actually shifting and warping right before his eyes. They've got an ugly sneer on their face as they kick Gordon in the side. "Dumb baby -- can't even, can't even, I just wanna talk, just for a second, and little loser Gordon can't even -- _fuckin'_ handle it, for _one_ second--"

"Fuck off," Gordon wheezes. Did his chest hurt this badly when he was being knocked around in Black Mesa, or had the HEV suit really dulled that much of the damage?

"Okay," Benrey says, and Gordon blinks and --

He's lying flat in bed, his sheets damp from sweat, clutching his chest, struggling to inhale past the strange soreness in his chest from a boot that'd seemingly never been there in the first place. He reaches for his phone on his bedside table and finds it fully charged -- he always plugged it in right before he went to bed, how could he forget that -- but the crowbar hidden just underneath his bed isn't there. Creeping out to his kitchen, his thumb over Dr. Coomer's number, he takes a breath and steels himself and gets ready to tear Benrey apart for the last time.

Of course, there's nobody there -- and nothing on the floor except for his old, beat-up, Black Mesa crowbar.

Gordon wonders why he'd even expected anything else.

He groans, loudly, into the silence of his apartment, and drags himself into the bathroom because he feels like he needs a fucking _shower_. Joshua is sound asleep. Crickets chirp from his apartment window. Gordon splashes his face with water to try to wake himself up and stares at his own reflection in the mirror.

"Benrey's dead," he says firmly to himself. He'd had a nightmare, that was all. The crowbar -- maybe he'd started sleepwalking or something. It wouldn't be too far-fetched. He knew that trauma could fuck people up, and whatever the hell the Black Mesa Incident had been definitely qualified as a source of trauma, in his opinion.

There's a dark bruise across the bridge of his nose, where his glasses typically are. Gordon prods at it, winces at the pain, and resolves himself to his fate of having to buy a good brand of concealer next time he goes shopping.

\---

His classes go more smoothly than Gordon could ever have expected them to go, honestly.

He'd called Dr. Coomer and Bubby the night before, asking them to take care of Joshua (according to a _very_ detailed schedule and to-do list that, although he's loath to admit it, he's almost one-hundred-percent sure that neither of them will follow through on) for the day and gotten an enthusiastic _yes, of course, Gordon!_ from the former and a _no, I don't fucking want to_ from the latter. He'd left a spare key to his apartment underneath some potted plants on his windowsill just in case they were missing anything or if Joshua wanted to stay in a place he was familiar with, taken a shower, covered up his bruise and thought up three vaguely-convincing explanations for the concealer if anybody noticed, dressed in business-casual clothing for the first time since the Resonance Cascade, and remembered how much he hated the tight feeling of a tie around his neck. He'd gone off expecting nothing but the worst from his introductory physics course for a bunch of college freshmen, but, surprisingly -- everything goes pretty damn well.

The students smile at him deferentially, averting their eyes when they walk into the room and obediently answering every time they're called on to answer a question. They look appropriately surprised when Gordon drops the _fuck_ word when his projector lens burns out and he has to call the campus technicians to come replace it. They give Gordon pitying laughs whenever he tries to drop a dad joke on them (which honestly, surpasses his expectations), only one kid falls asleep (it is, admittedly, a morning class), and he manages to get through his syllabus and assign homework without too many complaints and good-natured groans and finishes the class feeling, finally, like he has control over his own life -- and thank God for that.

Gordon's sorting through the paperwork at his desk, making sure that he has enough copies of the syllabus for the next class, as well. There are three other students still left in the room -- three black-haired girls, packing up their papers and consulting their schedules and maps while talking about their future plans.

"Yeah, I think I'm getting an aerospace engineering degree," one of them says, smiling. "An astronaut, maybe? I mean, I can't think of anything cooler than going to outer space. Leaving this world behind, and all that."

"Hey, I just wanna go home, have some dinner, and walk my dog," another says. All three of them laugh.

"Are you three siblings?" Gordon asks, trying to make small talk despite the odd sense of _déjà vu_ that he has listening to their conversation. He slings his bag over his shoulder and holds open the door for the three students. His watch tells him that it's almost noon -- he has a research meeting with a new team of scientists after his lunch break, and then a quantum physics class for a group of college juniors and seniors, and then after work he'd swing by the doctors' apartments to pick up Joshua for the night --

"What?" One of the girls looks at him, an owlish expression on her face. She tilts her head curiously. "Do we really look that alike?"

"Like mirror images!" Gordon laughs. "You've never gotten that before? I mean -- you three even have the same haircut, I'm sorry. I thought you were triplets."

Another one of them giggles. "We just met! I don't know what you're talking about, really."

"I've gotta run, I'm half an hour late for this thing…" the last one chimes in, and the other two give mumbled assents and then all three of them turn the corner and disappear, leaving Gordon alone in the room. He blinks a couple times, confused. He'd been sure…

His watch beeps, and he curses. At this rate, he wouldn't even have time for lunch, and he hastily checks through his bag one last time to make sure he'd gotten everything he wanted before he locks the door and jogs down the hallway.

\---

"So, how was he?" Gordon pants as he catches up with Dr. Coomer and Bubby, sitting on one of the benches in the park and watching Joshua toddle around in the grass, cooing nonsense words as he plays with sticks and rocks in the grass and stares open-mouthed at the pigeons and crows flocking around them.

"An absolute delight!" Dr. Coomer exclaims.

"Fucking terrible," Bubby mutters.

Gordon laughs nervously at Bubby. "I'm -- y'know, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you're joshin' with me -- right, like his name --"

"I just don't understand why he _does_ those things," Bubby says, exasperatedly, pointing at Joshua. Joshua, in return, stares at Bubby's finger for a few seconds, before giggling and returning to whatever elaborate roleplay he'd constructed for himself with the branches and leaves in the grass. Gordon's pretty sure that the world inside of Joshua's head would be harder for him to understand than any of the quantum physics courses he forced himself to grind through at MIT.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Gordon," Dr. Coomer explains hastily. "Bubby is just put off by --"

"I mean, when _I_ was a year old, I was already running advanced physics simulations with the rest of my prototypes," Bubby complains. "This little man doesn't even understand basic fucking calculus."

Gordon feels sweat drip down the back of his neck. "Bubby, are you -- are you implying that --"

"Well, Gordon, where are we going for lunch?" Dr. Coomer interrupts as brightly as ever, clapping his hands and getting to his feet. "You certainly cleaned up nice! Making a good first impression as a professor, I see?"

"An assistant professor, actually," Gordon says, smiling nervously and still thinking about the implications of whatever the _fuck_ had come out of Bubby's mouth. "Seriously, Bubby, I know that can't possibly be your real name, but --"

"Oh, pick up the kid and let's go," Bubby says, testily. "Tommy told us that you only had an hour's lunch break, and you don't just drink a can of soda like that freak, so we better hurry it up."

"And anyway, I don't want to miss my show!" Dr. Coomer says, turning to follow Bubby, who's already stalking off across the lawn.

"Show? What show did you start watching?"

"The news, Gordon! It's very important for a young man like you to stay well-informed," Dr. Coomer chides.

"I -- Dr. Coomer, the news is on all the time."

"And I'm missing it, so hurry it up!"

Gordon forces himself to take a deep breath, adjusting his glasses, before letting it all go in a harsh exhale. He scoops up Joshua and starts jogging to catch up with Dr. Coomer and Bubby who are already leagues ahead of him, crossing the street to the sandwich shop they'd decided to try the day before.

Gordon can hear Dr. Coomer loudly talking to the cashier, even across the street -- he's saying something like _Thomas, my boy, my friends and I are here to reserve a table!_ and Gordon breathes a sigh of relief, thinking _at least they know how to act_ relatively _normally_ but, to his dismay, Dr. Coomer doesn't _stop_ talking and "oh God, no, Dr. Coomer, please, you can't threaten the cashier like that in real life --"

\---

"Is it time for bed, kid?" Gordon mumbles, yawning. Joshua, even though he's already tucked into bed, responds in the negative with a squinty-eyed look, a firm shake of his head, and a string of nonsense syllables. Gordon briefly tries to make some sort of logical sense out of them, but he hasn't felt so tired in a good way in so long -- all he wants to do is go to bed and wake up refreshed in a place that isn't actively working to kill him or his friends every opportunity it gets.

"Is that a no?" Gordon says. Just -- he'll just rest his head on the edge of Joshua's bed, it'll be fine, he definitely wouldn't fall asleep there. "Because it's time for bed for Gordon, fella. Want -- wanna hear a story? Want -- you want Gordon to tell you about how he's trying to secure a grant? Do you know what a grant is, kid?"

Joshua happily burbles some more nonsense, and Gordon feels his heart both swell and sink at the same time. "Well, Joshua, you need a grant --"

"Bro, just fuckin' check Wikipedia," Benrey says, and Gordon almost gets whiplash from how quickly he scrambles to his feet and turns around to see Benrey again in his apartment.

"I told you to get out," Gordon hisses, looking around the room for a weapon before finally settling on Joshua's fucking table lamp, grabbing it by its base and ripping out the power cord and holding it over his head, ready to brain Benrey with it if they even tried anything funny. "And get away from my fucking _son_ , Benrey, I swear to God."

"Look -- look, hold on, you don't get me," Benrey says, holding their hands up like they're in surrender. Their eyes are lidded, almost like they're bored of the whole situation. "I can help. I can be nice when I try. Not like you, Gordon -- Gordon Feetman. Gordon Meanman. You're so mean."

"What the hell are you talking about? Get out of my fucking apartment!"

Before Gordon can do anything, Benrey's already singing, globules of that weird phantasmal blue goop dripping out of their mouth and floating over to Joshua's bed and Joshua giggles, entranced by the lights and Gordon swears that he's going to have a heart attack but when he dares to look over at Joshua again --

Joshua's sleeping, a gentle smile on his face, calmer than Gordon thinks he's ever seen him before. Drops of bright blue Sweet Voice soak into the pillow around his head. Benrey wipes their mouth with the back of their hand, leaving a glowing blue streak on their uniform sleeve.

Gordon motions with his head towards the door, his hands white-knuckled around the lamp. "Okay, you've helped Joshua sleep, now get out."

"Not even gonna say thank you," Benrey mutters, crossing their arms. "Meanman -- I call you Meanman for a reason, bro, you're so fuckin' _mean_ to me."

"You almost killed me!"

"Shut up, stupidhead, you'll wake up your own kid," Benrey says, flatly, and Gordon steps forward and brings the table lamp decisively down on their head, expecting it to pass through them just like the crowbar did, but it meets their solid metal helmet and explodes in a mess of glass and ceramic shards.

"What the fuck?" Gordon mutters.

"Look, he's awake now," Benrey says, their arms still crossed and face looking as bored as ever even though a fucking _lamp_ had been smashed over their head, but Gordon swears there's a hint of smug irony in their expression as they look over at Joshua, who's slowly starting to blink himself awake. "That's why everyone's afraid of you, Feetman. You wake people up. That's rude. That's real rude."

Gordon feels like his head is going to explode. He points at the door. "Out."

"Alright, alright, I'm going," Benrey acquiesces, and Gordon thinks _oh, this_ has _to be a trick_ , and sure enough, when Benrey opens the door to Joshua's room he doesn't see his apartment, he sees --

"Is this the fucking Chuck E. Cheese roof?"

"Huh?"

It's the fucking Chuck E. Cheese roof.

The sun is high in the sky. It looks like it's noon, but when Gordon turns around to look out Joshua's window, it's dark, just like it should be. Skyscrapers and apartment buildings rise through the heavy smog of a city that Gordon knows, logically, isn't real -- he'd only ever seen them through the dirty windows of the fucking Chuck E. Cheese's that Tommy had thrown his birthday party at.

God, he wants to take another shower.

"Look," Benrey says, beckoning Gordon along. "Just wanna talk, just wanna fuckin' talk, so we're gonna talk. Come here."

"No, what the _fuck_ ," Gordon hisses. If he steps through -- who's to guarantee that he'll be able to come back?

"Ffffuckin' -- come _on_ , you big fuckin' baby," Benrey says. They sit down at the edge of the roof, looking back at Gordon over their shoulder. "Place like this, uh, isn't it where you belong, anyway? Just play games all day, man, with the other elementary school kids --"

"I'm going to push you off of this building," Gordon says, decisively, and marches over to do just that, but the minute he steps through the doorway Benrey makes an odd motion with their hands and his feet are frozen to the ground the same way they were when they were in -- in Xen, surrounded by nothing but space, and his throat _constricts_ \--

"Big man's ready, now?" Benrey jeers, and Gordon blinks and Benrey's _right in front of him_ , looking at him with those alien, flashing eyes. "Ready to have a fuckin', uh, conversation? We ready to act like adults, now, not little idiot babies --"

"You're the one -- I don't even know what you're doing, man! Coming into my apartment when you should be dead -- I mean, I don't even know if you're real or a product of my fucking brain trauma."

"S'not like any of _your_ world is more real than this stupid -- rat entertainment center," Benrey snaps, motioning at Joshua's room behind Gordon.

"It's a fucking restaurant!"

"Nyeah-nyeah-nyeah," Benrey mocks. "You're not moving because you feel guilty, huh? You're too afraid of going off-script to move?"

"You're the one --"

"Huh?" Benrey says, stepping back, and Gordon stumbles forward now with the sudden loss of pressure around his legs and oh my God, he's going to strangle Benrey.

"I'm going to fucking strangle you," Gordon decides, lunging forward, but Benrey steps neatly out of his way.

"Wha -- what am I doing, bro? Aren't we bros?"

"Oh, we aren't -- you're trying to convince me that I'm going off-script? That Joshua isn't real? You just sound jealous -- y'know, I think you might just be jealous that you're trapped here and _we're_ not," Gordon spits.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Benrey says, levelly, stepping backwards to the edge of the roof. They're picking at the skin around their cuticles with jagged, dirty nails that've been bitten down to the bone. "I think -- y'know, I think you're jealous, because you know, uh, _you're_ trapped, not me."

"The whole Science Team is real, now, and we're all --"

Gordon cuts himself off, staring in wonder at the sun, sinking faster than it should ever sink below the horizon behind Benrey. It darkens their face behind the shadow of their helmet until their expression is practically unreadable. Their figure is engulfed in a halo of dully-glowing red light. Their shadow stretches tall between the two of them.

It looks like a skeleton.

Benrey curls their lip, almost laughing when their eyes follow Gordon's to the concrete rooftop. "Were you -- did you have something to say? Or did you -- are you feeling too scared to talk now? Little baby. Little stupid baby."

"What the fuck is wrong with you," Gordon hisses, in the most literal way possible.

"I think something's wrong with _you_ ," Benrey retorts, their voice lilting mockingly, their mouth lit up in bright blue.

"Don't fuck with me, Benrey, I fucking _warned_ you."

"What's wrong, bro, I dunno what you're --"

Before Benrey can even finish their sentence, though, Gordon's already rushing forward to push them head-first off the rooftop, consequences aside, but Benrey's ahead of him, throwing a lazy, dramatic salute at Gordon, falling backwards, their skeleton-of-a-shadow following their descent --

When Gordon looks over the side, he doesn't even see a trace of blood in the concrete parking lot.

The door to Joshua's room shuts behind him as soon as he steps back into reality. Joshua is awake, now, but quickly drifting back off to sleep; not a trace of Benrey's Sweet Voice stains the bed around him. The lamp still lies in pieces on the carpet. Gordon sweeps up its remains, opens the door again, walks out into his hallway, and throws the whole thing away in his kitchen trash can. He half-walks, half-staggers into his bathroom and turns on the shower as hot as he can handle.

\---

"It's happened twice, now?" Dr. Coomer asks, from where he's sitting across the table.

"Fuck off," Bubby says, vitriol heavy in his voice, in direct opposition to the comforting tone that Dr. Coomer had taken. "You -- we had a whole goddamn meeting set up with some people working at the branch of Wikipedia in this city, and you called us --"

"Yeah, you didn't even text!" Tommy helpfully chimes in.

"-- about some fucked-up hallucinations you're having?" Bubby angrily finishes. He taps his fingers impatiently against the table. "Gordon, they're _dead_."

"Tommy -- Tommy, please, don't tell me you're on Bubby's side in all this," Gordon groans, pushing his hair back. Tommy shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "I mean -- Benrey literally tried to kill us. I think that if I saw them twice after we killed _them_ , that's, y'know, a major issue!"

"Are you sure you don't just need a therapist?" Bubby asks, sardonically.

"No, I don't need a therapist!" Gordon shouts, too loudly for his own good, half-rising to his feet before he realizes that literally everybody else in the goddamn restaurant is staring at him and he hisses out a couple embarrassed _sorries_ before sinking down, face red, into his seat again. "I mean, _no_. I -- I wouldn't fucking bash my face into the floor to bruise my nose without noticing, I don't think I'm that --"

"You _are_ very clumsy, Gordon," Dr. Coomer observes, and Gordon wonders how socially unacceptable it would be for him to just walk over to Dr. Coomer's side of the table and hit him, who, to the general public, looks like a relatively normal old man, over the back of the head.

"Look, I just --" Gordon sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You guys just need to be careful, alright? I don't want them to -- to, I dunno, repeat whatever the fuck happened in Xen."

"You dragged us out here to tell us _that_?" Bubby mutters, crossing his arms.

"I think we'll be perfectly fine, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer smiles.

"R-right. You -- you always are, especially, Dr. Coomer." Gordon offers a weak smile of his own in return.

"We're not going to freak out like you are," Dr. Bubby says, exasperated, as he looks at his watch and gets to his feet. "Now, Harold, we better get going --"

"His first name is _Harold_?" Gordon asks.

"--because we've already pushed off this meeting for long enough," Bubby finishes, without bothering to answer Gordon's question.

"If I see anything, Gordon, you'll be the first to know!" Dr. Coomer says, getting to his feet along with Bubby and patting Gordon on the back in some vague attempt at comfort. "It's not like you have any more Play Coins to bypass the limits of this world with!"

"...Dr. Coomer, I'm still not sure what a Play Coin even is --"

"Come on, hurry up," Bubby snaps, grabbing Dr. Coomer's hand and dragging him out of the restaurant, Dr. Coomer waving a hasty goodbye before they disappear out the doors of the restaurant and leaving Gordon alone with Tommy, Sunkist, and a table of empty plates and soda cans.

Gordon lets out a tense breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding before sinking down on the table, putting his face in his hands. It's -- they weren't even taking him seriously. Benrey, within the confines of the script, was terrifying enough, but it wasn't like they chose to be any better of a person even _without_ it --

"Are you -- are you alright, Mr. Freeman?" Tommy asks, hesitantly reaching over to touch Gordon's shoulder.

"You can call me Gordon, y'know," Gordon says, his voice muffled by his hands. "I'm not your -- at least I hope I'm not your boss."

"Okay, Mr. Gordon Freeman," Tommy says. "I believe you, that they're back!"

"It's not -- you don't have to say the _mister_ or the _Freeman_ either, Tommy," Gordon says, caught off-guard with a startled chuckle. He looks up to see Tommy hesitantly smiling at him and making a thumbs-up motion with his other hand. "But -- wait, you do?"

"Of course? I don't think you'd lie to us."

"You sided -- didn't you just side with Bubby, when we were all talking about it?"

"I just said that you didn't bother to text, I -- I don't know what you're talking about," Tommy says, tilting his head curiously, and, well -- Gordon couldn't exactly say that he's wrong. "I mean, isn't it better if, uh, they don't really worry? Especially because Benrey seems like they're only after you _,_ which is, it's very strange, Mr. Freeman."

"It is, and it's fucking terrible," Gordon groans. God, he still needed to buy another fucking table lamp for Joshua. "I mean -- there's so many _other_ people in this city!"

"Well, only one Mr. Freeman -- I hope."

"It's a pain," Gordon complains. "T-Tommy, you gotta reassure me here. They were talking this -- this big game about the script and the city, which is stupid as hell, I mean, you guys are definitely real. I never thought I'd see Bubby like -- stab his food like he's trying to kill it, that's _definitely_ not part of the Game, right?"

"Of course!" Tommy laughs, patting Gordon on the shoulder as if to reassure him of his actual physical presence. "I think, well, it's very real! My dad -- my dad tried his best to meet my standards!"

"Thank God, there's another sane person at this table," Gordon sighs. "It's so fucking weird, seeing them again. I even -- I have a passport, now, they can't even get on my case for that! And they're the only one still bothering me --"

"Only?"

"Yeah, only," Gordon says, looking oddly at Tommy. "I mean, the other ones -- you guys all had to follow the script, but you guys are out here fine. Weren't there other characters, too?"

"I… I don't know what you're, uh, talking about," Tommy confesses. He has a genuinely confused look on his face. There's something else mixed into it -- something that Gordon can't read. "I remember the Science Team, and Benrey, and -- and my dog, Sunkist!"

"We do love Sunkist," Gordon confirms, and Sunkist, on cue, whines from the floor and puts his paws up on Gordon's lap. Gordon obliges him with a head-scratch. "But I mean -- the plot-relevant ones, right? There was that weird soldier, and the scientist that made me chug an entire barrel of _regenerative potion_ , I mean, that could literally have been like _gasoline_ and I would've just had to drink it."

Tommy's eyes widen. "Oh, I -- I can't believe I forgot about them!"

"Right? They were -- I guess they weren't too important, so the G-Man didn't pull them out?"

"What were -- do you remember their names, Mr. Freeman?"

"Dunno. Something -- God, I still can't believe Dr. Coomer's name is fucking _Harold_ \-- I know one of them sounded like Harold. Barold? Or Darold?"

"Darnold," Tommy suggests, and Gordon nods in recognition.

"That was it. The -- the potions guy."

"He was a mixologist, Mr. Freeman, and he was very, very proud of that!"

"Still think that has to do with alcohol, not chemistry," Gordon mutters. "And the soldier -- I think it was Frozen? Or Forzen, no, that's it."

"Forzen," Tommy repeats, almost meditatively. A beat of silence -- and then he snaps his fingers, like he's remembering something. "Mr. Freeman, is -- is Joshua still with your coworker?"

"Oh, shit," Gordon swears, scrambling to his feet as he checks his watch and he's already ten minutes late, oh _shit_ , he'll never be able to talk to this person again. He rifles through his wallet to pay for their meal -- goddammit, Dr. Coomer and Bubby keep stiffing him on the bills, _fuck_ , he didn't expect anything else from them but it's a matter of principle at this point --

"I got it," Tommy says, with his credit card already on the table. "You don't -- you don't want to be rude to your coworkers, Mr. Freeman!"

"Oh, I owe you so much," Gordon sighs in relief, making a beeline for the door while still yelling over his shoulder at Tommy. "Thanks for reminding me -- remember, if you see anything weird with Benrey, let me know --"

"I got it, Mr. Freeman!" Tommy says, as brightly as ever, waving as Gordon half-sprints to his car and takes off down the street. Sunkist paces impatiently at Tommy's feet while Tommy takes his time to get his own bearings: he puts his coat on, gives the waiter a meaningful look, shuffles his card away, and picks up Sunkist's leash, following Gordon out the door. Couldn't be wasting time; there were plenty of things both of them needed to get done, after all.

\---

"Wh -- you work here?" Gordon says, startled, almost spilling his coffee all over the sample test questions that he'd slaved over the night before when he sees -- the scientist, Darnold, waiting at the end of the hallway for him, waving like he was saying hello to an old friend.

"Of course I do, Dr. Freeman!" Darnold looks at Gordon with a bemused smile on his face. "See, I've recently been brought on as this university's resident mixologist. I figured that, well, it'd be nice to meet you again, as we'll undoubtedly be passing by each other?"

"Yeah -- yeah, and it'd be awkward to just sort of pretend not to know each other when we make eye contact, huh?" Gordon says, his mind spinning, but he forces out a nervous laugh and holds out his hand. "It's good -- good to be coworkers, I guess? Mixology is--"

"Mixology is a very real science, I assure you," Darnold smiles, graciously shaking Gordon's hand. "Are you new here, as well?"

"Well, I've been here for a couple weeks now -- I teach, see, in that classroom, mostly undergrads --"

"A couple weeks?" Darnold motions Gordon forward, and the two of them walk out of the building into the sunny courtyard together. "Sorry, I'm still trying to get my bearings. Would you mind taking me to the front office? I still have some permit forms to fill out, see."

"Of course, of course, just follow me," Gordon says, distractedly, even though all he really wants to do is ditch Darnold and figure out what the hell he was actually doing here. He swears that Darnold hadn't even been mentioned in any of the faculty meetings that they'd had recently -- they hadn't even mentioned any new hires the past couple days, Darnold must've come in out of nowhere and just asserted himself, somehow --

"I'm glad to have this opportunity, as I'm sure you are, too," Darnold rambles, Gordon barely listening to whatever was coming out of his mouth. "A real research institution that respects my work -- how exciting! I'll be able to share my potions with the world!"

"It took you a while to get here, though," Gordon comments absent-mindedly.

"A while?" Darnold asks. "I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, Dr. Freeman."

"Yeah, y'know, a while?" Gordon looks back at Darnold strangely. "I woke up in this city -- what, a couple weeks ago, now?"

"Odd," Darnold hums. "I was under the impression that the Game had… just ended, actually! I was very glad for it -- Dr. Freeman, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Gordon says, even managing to feign a smile, even though he feels all of the blood suddenly rush out of his head.

"You look awfully pale," Darnold remarks. "Do you need some water? A granola bar, perhaps?"

"Did Forzen show up with you?" Gordon asks.

"Who?"

"A -- a soldier, he was a member of the military --"

"Oh, I thought he was a cosplayer!" Darnold laughs. "I saw somebody like that in the park, I believe --"

"Sorry, Darnold, gotta run," Gordon says, waving a hand in the general direction of the front office and it faintly registers that _oh, it's probably kind of rude to turn around and leave out of nowhere_ , but his feet have already taken him out of the courtyard and down the street where he locks himself in his car and frantically unlocks his phone to call Tommy, what the hell, they'd _just_ talked about Darnold and Forzen the other day --

"Oh, don't fuck with me," Gordon mutters, under his breath.

There's three contacts on his phone that he recognizes: Bubby, Dr. Coomer, and Tommy. There's two more mystery numbers that he doesn't remember registering, but he'd put money on them being Darnold and Forzen's.

The last number on the list is familiar in the worst way possible. Gordon holds his finger on it and deletes it -- for the second time.

\---

"Is that my jacket?" The dumb question spills involuntarily out of his mouth before he can even begin to process his own surroundings.

"Mmmmmmyyeanope," Benrey drawls, deliberately wrapping the zip-up hoodie (that's definitely Gordon's, he recognizes the logo on the shoulder) more tightly around themselves, and then Gordon notices --

"Is it _snowing_?" he asks, incredulously, staring up at the sky around him.

The two of them are in an open-air train station in the middle of the mountains. Benrey is sitting on the edge of the platform across from Gordon, their head cocked to the side, helmet gleaming dully in the oddly-gray light that shrouds the two of them in a haze that Gordon can't seem to see clearly through. The tunnels are boarded up; chain link fences surround the heavily-graffitied concrete platforms they're standing on; broken crates and empty oil barrels line the platform; the corpses of two dead soldiers lie sprawled out on the tracks that separate them. Gordon's never seen this place in the daytime, and never expected to see it when it was snowing, especially considering that Black Mesa's testing facilities were built in the middle of the goddamn _desert_.

Then again, Gordon, coming home with his groceries, didn't expect to open his apartment door to find the fucking train station where he'd first started to suspect Benrey's eventual betrayal, so maybe the snow was, ironically, the least of his problems.

"Yep," Benrey confirms, as deadpan as ever, their eyes gleaming like car headlights. "It's not -- y'know, it's not that unexpected."

"What are you talking about --"

"Snow does that," Benrey says, motioning lazily at the clouds above them. "It falls. That's what it does."

"In the middle of the desert?"

"Huh?"

"It's not -- don't fucking answer that." Gordon sighs harshly, pinching the bridge of his nose, before dropping his groceries unceremoniously on the floor and spreading his arms dramatically. "You want -- you wanna talk? Talk to me, then. What the fuck could you possibly want to say?"

Benrey blinks, almost in surprise. Gordon notices that they're shivering -- at the same time that he notices that he doesn't even feel the bite of the cold.

"Little baby wanna talk, finally?" Benrey can't help but jeer.

"I can leave," Gordon says, pointing at the door behind him -- which still leads out to his apartment hallway.

"Nuh-uh, no, wait," Benrey says, making an oddly familiar motion with their hands, and Gordon moves backwards, ready to bolt the minute he feels his legs freezing up --

Nothing happens. Benrey's eyes narrow to glowing slits underneath the shadow cast by their helmet. Bright red Sweet Voice drips from their mouth.

"You don't have your passport this time?" Gordon mocks, an odd sort of -- triumph welling up in his chest. "Is that -- that's why you're suddenly cold? Why you can't stop me from leaving?"

"You just -- it doesn't work on super mean people," Benrey mutters, getting to their feet, finally. "You got, you got meaner, Feetman? Won't even -- you, uh, you smashed a lamp over my head before, what's Meanman gonna do now, huh?"

"Benrey, I swear to fucking God," Gordon hisses. "You're the one -- you're dragging me into these stupid nightmares and saying that you wanna talk but hey, it doesn't seem like you have anything to say --"

"Just chill out, man," Benrey mutters. "Ever just wanna hang? Just hang out with me, bro?"

"We're not _bros_ , and I have an entire life to walk back to --"

"Yeah, but you don't have a Playstation like I do --"

"It's literally _impossible_ for you to own a Playstation."

"Says who?"

"There's nothing out there!" Gordon yells, jabbing a finger violently at the mountains around them. "I know that! _You_ know that! Don't fucking -- don't make up dumb excuses to try to -- Christ, Benrey, do you understand that you almost killed me?"

"Would've just fuckin' respawned," Benrey mutters. "Didn't even matter."

"My hand mattered!" Gordon waves his prosthetic hand in the air. "This shit carried over -- Jesus, Benrey, just because you were immortal doesn't fucking mean _I_ was!"

Benrey stares at the prosthetic like it was the first time they'd ever noticed that Gordon was missing an entire arm, and Gordon swears that if they question _what happened to his fucking arm_ he's never humoring Benrey with the luxury of a conversation ever again.

"Is that real?" Benrey asks, instead, and Gordon nearly launches himself across the railroad tracks to strangle them.

"Wh -- of course it's real!"

"'Cause -- 'cause, y'know, it's not like Darnold is real," Benrey says, the words and their Sweet Voice spilling out of their mouth at the same time. "Or -- or Forzen, little baby Feetman thinks he's real? 'M not even sure they, uh, they have passports, but y'know, _uuuuuugh_ , Mr. MIT Graduate Feetman, believes it all even though they just fuckin', fuckin' showed up --"

"You think they aren't?" Gordon blurts, incredulously.

"Wha--" Benrey's voice lowers to a growl as they mimic the sweeping motion that Gordon had just made, gesturing contemptuously at the mountains surrounding them. " _There's nothing there_."

"Nothing for you, in this dead-end fucking -- I don't even know what the hell the Game was, but yeah, in _this_ fucking world there might not be anything --"

"Darnold and -- and Forzen, they were right here, they were right fuckin' here, until you brought them up to Tommy!" Benrey yells, stamping their foot childishly, and before Gordon can even blink they've crossed the train platform, standing _way_ too close to Gordon. "Fuckin' -- I don't even know how you can be so, so idiot, your fail world balanced on nothing --"

"What the hell are you --"

" _Auuuuuuugh,_ now _you're_ possessed by the script too--"

"Maybe if you explained what the hell was going on, I might listen-- Benrey, there's no goddamn script!" Gordon protests furiously, and Benrey's eyes glint and then they've wrapped a hand in Gordon's collar, red-to-yellow Sweet Voice streaking their fangs and staining Gordon's jacket and dripping onto the floor.

"Stupid baby," Benrey hisses, instead. "Being -- being tricked, _auuugh_ , Feetman thinks he's so smart -- have you even thought about how sucks for me this is, how sucks for _you_ this is, 'specially when you don't -- can't even see -- wouldn't be able to _say_ it -- _ughhh_ , this sucks so big!"

Gordon stares down at Benrey as their eyes flash, their breath heavy with red and yellow bubbles that slip out from between their teeth, that pop in the air above them in piercingly-loud _snaps._

"I have no fucking idea what you're talking about, Benrey," Gordon says, slowly, more levelly than he thinks he's ever spoken before in his entire life, and Benrey loosens their grip on his collar in surprise and then Gordon clocks them across the jaw and knocks them backwards and makes a break for the metal door behind him, slamming it shut in Benrey's face with a loud _clang_ , and he hears and feels the deafening _bang_ of _something_ ramming itself into the door behind him and then there's blessed, blessed silence.

He sinks heavily against his now-apartment door, putting his face in his hands and he knows, he knows that there's no fucking way the world is as scripted as Benrey believes it to be, but --

 _God, I'm a theoretical_ fucking _physicist_ , Gordon thinks, exhausted. _And even_ I _don't want to think about whatever fucking_ theory _that Benrey thinks they're so brilliant for coming up with._

\---

Gordon feels bad about always burdening Dr. Coomer and Bubby with Joshua whenever he's teaching classes or doing research, but Joshua always seemed happy enough to be left with his "grandpas," while Dr. Coomer was always delighted to spend a day with "the younger version of our good friend Gordon." Bubby, of course, constantly complains about how Gordon's imposing on them, but Gordon swears that his sour expressions morph into smiles the minute Gordon gets out of sight.

He's kept busy enough, for sure -- arguably, he's even busier than he was when he was employed at Black Mesa, and yet he always ends each day feeling _comfortably_ tired instead of _unpleasantly_ tired. Sure, he might have to work his way through stacks of test questions and homework and try his best to decipher where the fuck his students had gotten this number or why they even thought about using that equation, but at least he wasn't dealing with weird, constantly-shifting schedules and experiments that bordered the line between _legal_ and _illegal_ anymore. Seeing Darnold -- and Forzen, later, who'd been taken on as the fucking football coach, out of all things -- walking around campus still sends shivers down his spine, but overall, the predictability of his schedule is…

Relaxing, at the very least.

Plus, at least he got to take regular lunch breaks and go to actual restaurants in his area, instead of having to depend on the shitty Black Mesa cafeterias that got their food from God-knows where in the middle of the fuck-nowhere desert. The more he thinks about what Dr. Coomer had told him about their experiments with flash-freezing human meat, the more he considers the fact that maybe Tommy was right in only drinking a cocktail of sodas for lunch every day.

Everything that Benrey had said had definitely put him on edge, though.

The three girls had recommended him some out-of-the-way, family-owned restaurant to try out, but Gordon's only half-paying attention to the menu as he tries his best to inconspicuously study the faces of the people around him. In the Game, everyone had looked oddly… similar, in the strangest way. The people sitting here all look like -- they look like real families, real couples, real people, and Gordon had never been a people-watcher and he's not entirely sure if he's actually being discreet about the whole thing or if they think that he's being a creep --

"Can I take your order, sir?" The waiter gives Gordon a reassuring, retail smile and Gordon jolts to attention, quickly skimming through the menu and trying to find something that looked vaguely-appetizing, _oh God, how long have I just been sitting here spacing out and staring at people?_

"Uh, I'll take this," Gordon says, blindly putting his finger down somewhere on the menu and his heart sinks when he looks down and realizes what he was pointing at.

The waiter's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "Do you… just want a soda?" he asks, and Gordon thinks, _God, maybe I_ am _a freak._

"Yeah, uh, that and a number one," Gordon says blindly. He doesn't know what the fuck a "number one" is, but the waiter nods approvingly anyway and writes it down accordingly. Gordon squints to read the nametag pinned onto the man's apron. _Thomas_ , it says. Something about it makes Gordon's hair stand on end.

"Hey, random question," Gordon asks, suddenly. The waiter looks down at him, surprised.

"I'm running on a tight schedule, sir," he says, apologetically. "If you need me for a survey or something, maybe come by after work hours --"

"No, it's just -- just, uh, personal curiosity," Gordon says, feeling stupider with every word that comes out of his mouth. "What do -- uh, what do you dream about?"

The waiter looks startled. "You mean… like, when I'm sleeping?"

"No, I mean -- sorry, like, if you weren't working here? Like -- like long-term goals, sort of? If that makes any sense." _Oh God, I'm never going to be able to eat here again._

Thomas shuffles on his feet nervously. "I've never really had anyone ask me that, before."

"Oh, that's kind of sad --"

"To go to outer space, I guess," he says, and the least-comforting sense of _déjà vu_ Gordon thinks he's ever felt hits him like a tidal wave. "It'd be pretty cool to leave this world behind."

Gordon takes a breath, gets ready to dig his own grave, feels _stupid_ for falling straight to -- to conspiracy theories over weird coincidences. "Do your friends call you Tommy?"

The waiter laughs. "Yeah! How'd you know?"

Gordon blinks. The waiter's face -- something about it is off, something about is familiar in the oddest way and he swears he's seen it before --

The man has the same name and face as the cashier at the sandwich shop that Dr. Coomer and Bubby had wanted to try, that first day that they'd taken care of Joshua.

"Have you worked anywhere else?" Gordon asks. He almost doesn't want to know the answer.

"No, not recently --"

"Sorry," Gordon mumbles, already fumbling for his phone and grabbing his messenger bag and roughly pushing his way past Thomas on his way to the door. "I gotta -- I just realized, sorry --"

"Did I -- sir, I can get you another server, if you'd like --"

"Don't bother!" Gordon calls over his shoulder, and he shoves his way through the crowd at the entrance, their faces blurring before his eyes, his phone in his hand as he tries to call the Tommy that he knows _has_ to be real.

\---

"I've got a weird question, Tommy," Gordon starts, the minute he and Tommy fall in step on the sidewalk together. Tommy looks at him with an innocently wide-eyed expression and Gordon curses at himself because he can't back out of this, now.

"You can ask me anything, Mr. Freeman!" Tommy says, brightly. "I'll -- well, you know I always do my best to answer!"

"Yeah, and thank God for that," Gordon sighs, trying his best to manage a genuine smile for Tommy. "It's about -- the Game, though, and I know that most of us don't really want to talk about that."

"Mr. Freeman, we can't avoid the conversation forever," Tommy says. "I'm very, very glad that you decided to bring it up with me, though! I can call Mr. Coomer and Mr. Bubby about it later, too, and we can have a boys' night --"

"Sorry, a _boys' night_?" Gordon laughs. "Make a whole event out of it?"

"Oh, that'd be so much fun!" Tommy giggles, and even Sunkist seems to bark in agreement. "I got new Beyblades, the, the Hypersphere Dual Pack with Dusk Balkesh and Right Artemis, but of course I have the classics like, uh, Storm Pegasus and Flame Libra, and we could bring our favorite movies, and have a sleepover--"

"It'd be good for Bubby, too, huh?"

"Oh, Bubby's never had a sleepover!" Tommy gasps. "We -- oh, we _have_ to fix that, Mr. Freeman!"

"Oh my God," Gordon chuckles, pushing his hair out of his face. "You're right. I'm not bringing Joshua to a fucking boys' night with the entire Science Team, though, he'd hurt himself on your Beyblades."

"Well, you could -- uh, leave him with Darnold or Forzen?"

"You've met them?" Gordon asks, surprised. He thinks about the prospect of leaving Joshua with either of them -- one of them a self-proclaimed mixologist and the other one a die-hard football coach -- and involuntarily shudders. Maybe it _would_ be safer to bring Joshua with him, after all. "I saw them for the first time -- what, last week?"

"Y-yeah!" Tommy looks oddly -- strained. "It's -- it's good that they made it out!"

"Took a while, though," Gordon reflects. It's -- strange, for sure, that the Science Team had made it out first -- then again, Darnold and Forzen only really appeared after Gordon and Tommy talked about them --

"You had a question, though, Mr. Freeman?" Tommy, thankfully, interrupts Gordon's thoughts. They're off the beaten path, now -- south from the park where Gordon typically met up with Dr. Coomer and Bubby at the end of the day to pick up Joshua. Tommy seems to know where he's going, though, so Gordon doesn't bother to ask. He'd told his research team that he had… other business to take care of, and honestly, he'd put 'a conversation with Tommy' at the top of his list of priorities any day of the week.

"Wh -- Yeah, yeah, sorry," Gordon says, tacking onto an embarrassed half-laugh at the end of his apology to try to lessen the tension that'd suddenly sprung up between the two of them. "It's about --"

"Benrey?"

"Oh -- well, that and something else, how'd you know?"

"Well, I, uh, figured that you, you might be worried about them, because they were the big bad, right?" Tommy absentmindedly scratches the back of his neck. "The people following the script -- everybody else is out here already, so I mean, it couldn't have been any of us."

"It's about their Sweet Voice, actually," Gordon says, biting the bullet. He swallows down the other choice words he wanted to say about Benrey, seeing the concerned expression Tommy's already wearing. "Do you -- you can read it, right?"

"Oh, of course!"

"Red to yellow," Gordon says.

"Oh, that -- that doesn't mean very good things." Tommy speaks slowly, hesitantly, almost like he's trying to pick his words as carefully as he can. "Red to yellow -- yellow like, like…"

"...A bright yellow rose?" Gordon fills in, lamely.

"Oh, that's very, _very_ bad," Tommy gasps. "Red to yellow means… don't trust that fellow. Did Benrey tell you that? Who -- who could they have been talking about, Mr. Freeman?"

Gordon pauses. Tommy's steps have taken the two of them to -- a train station. The tunnels are boarded up; chain link fences surround the heavily-graffitied concrete platforms they're standing next to; broken crates and empty oil barrels line the platform. Gordon thinks, _Shouldn't it be snowing?_ before he realizes why the platform seems so familiar in the first place.

"Where -- Tommy, where are we?" Gordon asks, trying to keep panic from seeping into his voice.

"An old train station." Tommy inspects it with narrowed eyes. "It's going to be demolished soon, Mr. Freeman. It didn't even meet OSHA standards, can you -- can you believe it?"

Gordon squints at the station behind the fencing. There's a jacket there, an old, zip-up hoodie, with a logo on the shoulder that Gordon recognizes, lying half-hidden behind one of the broken wooden crates on the other side of the tracks.

"What a shame," Gordon says. He thinks he's going to pass out.

"I guess," Tommy says. He turns back to Gordon, a bright smile on his face. "You had something else to ask me, though?"

Gordon makes a split-second decision.

"Nah, I was just being paranoid," Gordon laughs, nervously. "People -- I keep thinking I see the same people around, y'know?"

Tommy hums, looking at Gordon curiously. "Really? Do they -- I mean, do you think it has to do with, with Benrey?"

"I mean -- I haven't really seen them around lately," Gordon lies, brushing a stray lock of hair out of his face. "S'just a nightmare I had with them in it, y'know? I figured -- I mean, you can translate, you'd probably read my weird fucking brain trauma or whatever better than I could."

"Well, I'm glad to help, Mr. Freeman," Tommy says, clapping his hands together. "It's -- I know it must be difficult to sleep, because of everything --"

"It really is," Gordon confirms, trying his best to ignore the sick feeling that settles to the bottom of his stomach like a rock because -- well, out of the whole Science Team, Tommy still hadn't technically betrayed him yet, but now Gordon's the one betraying _him_ over some dumb thing that Benrey was trying to make him paranoid over --

_Well, what if Benrey's right?_

They walk back to the park, making small talk that Gordon can barely keep up with for how badly his head's spinning. He tells Tommy that he had to get back to his research meeting, but when he gets in his car, he drives the opposite direction of the university -- straight back to his apartment complex. He needs -- he doesn't even know what he needs. Silence? Solitude? Another goddamn conversation with that cryptic motherfucker?

Gordon's driving doesn't go unnoticed. Tommy sighs, sitting on the curb next to Sunkist, who butts his head comfortingly into Tommy's knee.

"It's -- it's not fair," Tommy complains, scratching Sunkist under his ear. His dad is -- off doing _whatever._ Benrey doesn't believe in him. Gordon's -- whatever Benrey's telling him, it's turning him away, too, when all that Tommy wants them to do is _trust him._

He'd seen the jacket down by the tracks, of course. It looked -- way too new, frankly, to have spawned there naturally with the rest of the low-poly junk that his dad had generated for the sake of the Game. He knew that having a script was a bad idea -- I mean, that's why he was letting this universe grow organically, without one -- but he should've guessed --

Tommy groans dramatically, rocking slightly from side to side, to Sunkist's dismayed barking and vague attempts at comfort. The rumble of storm clouds echoes in the distance. He'd have to make a phone call of his own.

\---

"You're fuckin' -- fuckin' wet, nasty boy," Benrey taunts, from where they're lounging on the locker room bench.

Gordon slams the metal door shut behind him, but it, thankfully, doesn't totally block out the sound of the rain pounding against the other side of it. He doesn't know whether he's relieved or annoyed to have found the fucking Black Mesa locker rooms in what should be the physics building -- I mean, he wanted his questions answered, but getting anything useful out of Benrey was like pulling teeth -- but either way he's here, he's soaked, and Benrey is staring at him with those glinting eyes like they're trying to bore a hole through his skull with just their gaze. Water practically pools underneath his feet. It'd been raining for two days straight, at this point, just fucking pouring on the streets, and Joshua had been crying the whole time because he's scared of the thunder and Gordon feels sluggish from how little sleep he's gotten --

"--Earth to Mr. Feetman, hello, loser, are you in there? Did your -- did you little baby brain turn off, seeing me?" Benrey snaps their fingers repeatedly in Gordon's general direction. "I mean, c'mon. I thought you didn't wanna kiss?"

"I don't," Gordon says. He doesn't have anything to smash over Benrey's head -- I mean, unless he managed to wrench a locker door off of its hinges, but those things were practically welded together for how badly they screeched every time he used to open one. "Fucking -- move, asshole."

"Huh?"

"Move _over_."

"Wha?"

Gordon decides that he doesn't need a weapon. He shoves Benrey aside on the bench, sending them half-sprawling on the ground, and takes their spot, putting the tests that his class was supposed to be going over that day on the bench behind him. Benrey gets to their feet, futilely dusting themselves off (even though they're still coated in blood and grime from the Game itself), muttering insults under their breath.

"Look, I'm going to ask questions, and you're going to fucking answer," Gordon says, exasperatedly. Benrey side-eyes them, but they sit down next to Gordon, anyway.

"You actually gonna _listen_ , though?" they mumble.

"Who am I not supposed to -- to trust?" Gordon asks, in one harsh breath, and he doesn't think he's ever seen Benrey's eyes widen so quickly, bright red Sweet Voice already starting to drip out of the corners of their mouth.

"Huh?"

"Benrey, I'm getting fucking--"

"You -- wh -- how did you --"

"Red to yellow," Gordon says, exasperatedly. "You were -- you had that shit all over you the last time we talked -- a-and what the hell were you thinking, making the train station real?"

"You fucking asked _Tommy_?" Benrey hisses, and Gordon barely has time to think _oh shit_ before Benrey's on him, twisting their hand into his collar again. "Stupid -- _auuuuugh_ , you fucking _ruined_ \--"

"Benrey, I can't fucking ruin what I don't know about --"

"No, nuh-uh, shut _up_ ," Benrey interrupts, closing their eyes, and Gordon's startled into silence. Their face twists oddly, like they're focusing on something that Gordon can't see, and then their grip tightens and the world _shifts_ \--

One of the lockers opens, and inside, Gordon sees his empty classroom -- class wouldn't start for another half-hour, and it's dark as hell inside, without the morning sun or any of the fluorescent lights on to make it seem any more welcoming. Another door is flung wide, and there's the inside of a restaurant, the waiters and waitresses that'd been prepping the place for the morning rush looking back at Benrey and Gordon with steadily-growing shock and horror on their faces. The third opens -- to fucking Dr. Coomer and Bubby, in their apartment together, pop music filtering through shitty phone speakers just loudly enough to drown out the sound of their apartment door unlocking itself, Dr. Coomer making breakfast and Bubby grouching about needing coffee --

"Benrey, what the fuck, what _is_ that -- close that shit!" Gordon hisses, but not quickly enough to avoid Bubby, turning around to meet Gordon's eyes. Before Gordon can even call out to him Benrey's waved their hands and all the doors slam shut with a heavy _clang_ and they let go of Gordon's collar and collapse back onto the bench like they're exhausted from _whatever_ display of power that was.

A beat -- two -- of silence, and then--

"Benrey, what the hell _._ " Gordon feels a dull rage boiling inside of him and he reaches over, grabs Benrey by the shoulder, and forces them to look up at him. "Is this what -- what the fuck are you doing? Holy _shit_ , Benrey, what does this have to do with -- with the script, with the Game --"

"Mneahmneahmneah, stupid Feetman, doesn't get it --"

"Can you take _anything_ seriously, Christ!"

Benrey's mouth obediently clamps shut -- but they stare up at Gordon, defiantly dead-eyed, refusing to even _smirk_ at Gordon's confusion. Gordon feels a headache starting to pulse in his temples. "I -- oh my God, I'm sick of being fucked with, tell me what is going on or I swear to God, I'm going _straight_ back to Tommy for answers."

"Look," Benrey says, aggravated. They're the first to break eye contact. "The -- the uh, the Game, right, that's this," they explain, holding up their left hand. "And then -- the new world, the one that Tommy made, is _this_." They hold up their right hand.

"Tommy made--"

"Shut up, stupidman," Benrey interjects. They make an elaborate, dramatic performance out of interlacing their fingers together. "Get it?"

"No, no, no -- Tommy made --"

" _Auuuuuuugh_ \-- do I have to spell it out for you, stupid, I'm not even the one with a PhD --"

"The universes are -- you're saying the fucking _universes_ are colliding," Gordon sputters, and yep, there it is, there's the headache he's been expecting all day. "You're saying -- you're saying the real world --"

"It's still fuckin' scripted, genius," Benrey says, sardonically.

"Okay, you're wrong on that front --"

"If the -- the G-Man made this world, who's to say Tommy -- Tommy, he's, he's just like him --"

"Tommy cares about us, Benrey!"

"Not about me," Benrey hisses, and Gordon almost recoils at how much _vitriol_ fills their voice. "If he -- _uuuuugh_ , you don't _get it_ , they wouldn't let me, let me fuckin' go home and play Heavenly Sword, they made me _baaaaaad_ \--"

"You're -- you chose to be the villain --"

"I _haaaad_ to, stupid pissbaby, the script wasn't just for your _friends_ \--"

"You were an asshole even before the end!"

"And so what?" Benrey snaps, and Gordon swears he could punch them but the bubbles coming from their mouth are bright green, _green means they're not mean_ , he hears Tommy say. "They told me -- they made me bad, and so I was real _bad_ and I made up reasons to be real _bad_ , and then you didn't like that and _so what_ , you're, you and your loser friends are out there and I'm not --"

"They made you --"

"I had to be the villain, dumb, shithead idiot, I was gonna be nice to you!"

"You're being -- you don't even have the script to back you up anymore, and you're still insulting me! What the fuck do you mean you chose that?"

" _Someone_ has to be mean!" Benrey gets to their feet and Gordon follows and their Sweet Voice shifts dangerously, flashing red like a fire alarm.

"It doesn't have to be _you_ , there's no more script --"

"Doesn't -- doesn't matter --"

"Of course it does!"

"Well then -- what -- I don't fuckin' have anything else!" Benrey yells, and Gordon recoils and Benrey catches themselves with their hands, stifling the Sweet Voice threatening to spill out from between their teeth.

Another beat. Two. Benrey breathes heavily, their hands clamped over their mouth.

"How do we stop it?" Gordon says, levelly, trying his best to suppress the panic creeping up his throat, ignoring the dull pain drumming at his skull.

Benrey drops their hands. Their sleeves are streaked with pink and blue, but they've recovered their composure, their eyes narrowed into angry slits, their mouth defiantly twisted in a contemptuous sneer. "You -- _don't_ , that's what you fuckin' do."

"Benrey, I'm not fucking letting -- I'm not letting you destroy my world because you think --"

"You can stay here, you can --"

"Or you can come with me and fucking apologize to Tommy and we can figure it out as, y'know, a team, what we were supposed to be?"

"I don't -- they didn't give me any other script, I'm gonna go out there and I'll be _baaaad_ and you'll hate me, _auuuuugh, stupid evil loser, can't even play their dumb game right_ ," Benrey growls, their hands clenching at their sides and Gordon swears their face is blurring, their eyes shifting from two-three-five-seven-none, purple and black squares glitching in and out of the walls --

"It's not scripted!"

"How do you know that?" Benrey catches Gordon's wrist in a vice of claws, a snarl etched into their shifting face. "You're -- _mneahmneahmneah_ , you don't have to be there to see it fall apart, the Game helps me _here_ but it can't help me out _there_ \--"

"What am I supposed to -- you're glitching out, this world is glitching out, if Tommy created the new one he can help get rid of the old one --"

"And fuck _me_ over?"

"He's a good dude!"

"Yeah, a good dude, doin', doin' real _baaaaad_ things, huh," Benrey challenges, their grip tightening around Gordon's wrist and Gordon feels a stinging pain radiating from where their claws are digging into his skin. "I want to -- I've gotta follow you, I can protect you from him."

"I don't need to be protected, _you_ need --"

"What, stupid Feetman, you gonna tell me what I need?"

"Yeah!" Gordon yells, and Benrey flinches, confused, and Gordon, for the second time, tears his wrist out of Benrey's grasp and rushes for the door of the locker room and behind him is the distinct _crack_ of bone and _tear_ of flesh and he feels something _yank_ at the back of his raincoat and he disentangles himself from it seconds before he's pulled flat on his back and he slams the door behind him as he stumbles out into the pouring rain and finds himself faced with the faint gasps of the students that've started to trickle up the stairs of the physics building.

"Class is canceled," Gordon declares, heaving in deep gulps of air, water streaming down his face and he can't tell if it's the rain or if he's actually starting to cry from panic.

"Doctor -- Doctor Freeman?" One of the three black-haired girls he'd talked to on that first day -- the triplets-that-weren't-really-triplets -- looks at him with wide eyes, clutching her binders protectively to her chest. "What -- are you okay? What happened to your wrist?"

Gordon looks down to see -- five bright red, bloody scratches dragged down his forearm, a bruise already blossoming purple where Benrey had grabbed him. He instinctively moves it out of sight, smiling nervously at the small crowd that'd started to gather in front of him. "It's nothing, nothing -- I just got into a bad fight with my cat."

Lightning flashes, thunder rumbles, and a couple of the students wince. A bright white arc crackles to the ground somewhere in the near-distance, and Gordon prays that it didn't hit anything flammable. In that split second, the three girls, standing together --

Their shadows, distorted by the steps of the building, look more like skeletons than people.

Gordon fumbles for his phone, thanks whatever God's out there that it wasn't in his coat pocket, stumbles down the steps past the shocked whispers of the class that he was supposed to be teaching, and bolts through the rain for his car. He dials Tommy's number frantically, but --

\---

"Dad, I need -- I think I need help," Tommy mumbles, covering his mouth with his hand as he talks into the phone. The rain pounds harshly against the windows of the flimsy apartment he'd decided to claim as his own. A flash of lightning illuminates the otherwise-dark room.

A long-suffering sigh breathes static into his ear, but when his father speaks, his voice rings as clearly as it ever does, echoing through Tommy's skull like it's a thought rather than a separate person talking to him. "I've already made the world according to your… standards, Tommy. There shouldn't be any issues with... letting it _evolve,_ as you so nicely put it."

"But I -- I don't know what to do, now, I forget --"

"The world moves on."

"B-but it's _breaking_."

"Nothing is broken. Aren't your… friends, as you call them, happy with their situation? Are they not entertained?"

"One of them -- the one you made the villain, they don't -- it's going wrong, like a train, a train falling off of its tracks."

"What's making you think of trains?"

"One -- one appeared in, in the town, and I don't like trains, but I know that this one is from -- from your Game."

Another static sigh. "Things like this happen, Tommy. I'm sure you're aware of what's causing this… deterioration."

"Didn't you -- you said that everything was approved! Everything was cleaned up! The Game, I thought…"

"It's out of my hands," the G-Man says, simply. "And anyway, aren't you… glad to have it out of yours?"

"I thought -- I didn't think --"

"Reality changes, Tommy. Do what you think is right. I value... the survivors, after all."

Beep. Dial tone. Tommy sighs and pushes his hair back, knocking his hat askew -- but he barely even notices it, with the pressure of the universe weighing on his mind. There are multiple missed calls on his phone, but he has to focus, before everything falls apart, before his dad can tell him that he was wrong in wanting the world to be unscripted, in wanting his friends to _live_ , for once.

Tommy turns off his phone, lies flat on his bed, closes his eyes. Sunkist curls up next to him -- a warm, comforting reminder that he _could_ create in the first place, that he _could_ use his powers just as well as his father did. He slows his breath -- drops into the Void -- tries -- to -- _dream_ \--

\---

"Dr. Coomer! Bubby!" Gordon yells, even before he's wrenched open his car door, but he must've made a pretty loud skidding sound when it came to a stop in front of their apartment building because the two of them are already halfway out the door, juggling Joshua between them under a comically-large umbrella that Bubby somehow manages to fold up and finesse into the back seat of the car with them. The minute they're strapped in, Gordon's got his foot on the accelerator again, the wheels kicking up mud and rainwater in their wake.

"Hello, Gor --"

"Yes, yes, _hello_ , Dr. Coomer," Gordon says, exasperatedly, trying his best to remember where Tommy's apartment building is -- a left here, a right here, then a stoplight and they're screeching to a halt, jolting forward everyone in the car, Joshua's scream of delight providing a welcome contrast to Bubby's loud swearing.

"Oh, that was so fucking rude," Bubby grouches. "Warn us next time you stop like that."

"I -- it's not like you're a better driver!"

"What the hell did you even drag us out here for? It's pouring, Jesus Christ."

"The world is -- Bubby, didn't you see me and Benrey in the locker rooms, holy shit --"

"Things are going wrong, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer interrupts, at the same time as the light turns green and Gordon slams his foot down half-in-shock at Dr. Coomer's words and all four of them are pushed harshly back into their seats.

"They are?" Gordon and Bubby ask, incredulously, at the same time.

The windshield wipers are working in overtime. Gordon's the first to recover from his surprise. "I mean, you noticed? Wh -- why didn't you --"

"Gordon, being self-aware during the Game itself did provide me with certain advantages!" Dr. Coomer answers, and Gordon almost wants to park his car and tell Dr. Coomer to get _out_.

"Wh -- and you didn't tell me?"

"Tommy did assure me that he was trying his best, and we all trust Tommy, don't we?"

"So he _does_ have something to do with this, oh my God." Gordon scowls, and then his eyes widen and he yells "shit!" as he swerves roughly to the side and Bubby curses and Joshua screams and Dr. Coomer nearly bashes his head against the window as Gordon slams on the brakes before he can run into --

"What in the goddamn hell _is_ that?" Bubby asks, the sour expression that'd been a permanent fixture on his face finally replaced by _fear.  
_

A tall pillar of purple-and-black polygons spirals up into the air, piercing through the clouds, glitches crackling outwards like branches from its base, and Gordon realizes, dumbly, that _oh, that's -- the lightning strike._ Cars honk angrily at Gordon as they pass by, phasing through it like it's nothing but air, but when they come out on the other side, their passengers look -- broken, somehow, like they're not all there, wheels or bumpers or entire rooftops replaced by hazy, untextured messes but they keep driving like nothing's wrong --

"It's not real," Dr. Coomer says, confidently.

"Oh my God," Gordon says, instead of replying. He can feel his hands shaking. "I -- it's _definitely_ real, can't you see --"

"It's not real in this reality, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer says. "And so, by passing through it, they're being -- corrupted, in a sense! We are likely among the select few who can actually see that monstrosity!"

"Then what -- what can we even _do?_ "

Bubby harshly kicks the back of Gordon's seat. "You drive _around_ it, motherfucker, or I'll take the wheel myself!"

"Okay, okay, I'm driving!" Gordon takes a breath, peels away from the curb, takes a wide berth around whatever the hell had been leaking into their universe, prays that they're close to Tommy's apartment so that he could explain the whole thing --

"Be careful, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer exclaims, and then Bubby's got his hand on the wheel, yanking Gordon to the left and Gordon yelps as they dodge past fucking _peeper puppies_ , howling in the middle of the road, and oh my God, that's a golem ape in the distance and a fucking skyscraper shatters underneath its fist and then another bright flash of untextured lightning that Bubby narrowly skirts past and the aliens are gone like they'd never been there in the first place. Joshua's crying, and Gordon feels his heart twisting. A few more blocks -- just a minute more, just get to Tommy, get him to fucking explain, everything would be _fine._

"Intriguing, Gordon!"

"There's nothing intriguing about trying not to die!"

"Keep your fucking eyes on the road!"

"Oh my God, oh my God, okay, I'm trying --"

Bubby pushes Gordon harshly to the side and Gordon never thought that he'd be forced to face the literal demon of backseat driving but then a car alarm goes off and Gordon's hurled forwards, his nose and glasses cracking against the wheel, and he blinks the stars out of his eyes and wipes away the blood starting to stream out of his nose and he realizes that _oh, Bubby just crashed my fucking car into -- into -- a fucking bullsquid, okay, okay --_

"Get out!" Bubby yells, throwing open Gordon's car door and dragging him out into the pouring rain. Dr. Coomer and Joshua are already halfway across the street under Bubby's umbrella, making their way through the shin-deep water flooding the streets to Tommy's apartment, and Gordon and Bubby stagger after them. He can barely see past the blur of raindrops on his shattered glasses. Bubby's tugging him along, barking insults and encouragement to him at the same time, and then they're on the sidewalk and Dr. Coomer's holding open the front door of the building for them and all three of them fling themselves indoors to the receptionist's shock and concern but Gordon doesn't even spare them a second glance before he's pounding on the button for the elevator.

"Very sorry," Dr. Coomer apologizes, throwing the umbrella to the side so he can support Joshua with both of his hands.

"Oh my God," the receptionist mutters. "Oh my God, do I need to -- call the police, oh my God --"

The _ding_ of the elevator -- and it opens into an untextured room that wavers and shifts and then the whole elevator _falls_ , long-distant screams from people who aren't there echoing up the elevator shaft and Gordon recoils, that'd happened before, he'd _seen_ that before --

The air crackles and something inexplicably _shifts._

"Mr. Freeman, are you running late again?" The receptionist looks at Gordon with an annoyed expression on their face, crossing their arms impatiently. "There was a system crash about twenty minutes ago. _You_ need to be on your way to the experiment room."

"Stairs, stairs, come on!" Gordon yells, and then the four of them are scrambling up a set of badly-constructed metal stairs that look more like factory stairs than apartment stairs, the guardrails rusting away, the creak of air vents and groaning metal surrounding them and Gordon's the first to the fourth floor, bruising his fist against Tommy's door, praying against all hope that Tommy fucking answers --

"I've got this," Dr. Coomer says, passing Joshua to Bubby and rubbing his hands together, almost in anticipation.

"What -- what are you --"

"Oh, he's got this," Bubby says, dismissing Gordon.

"I don't think -- we're not in the Game, anymore, I don't know --"

"Watch this, Gordon!" Dr. Coomer exclaims, and he pulls back his arm and levels a fucking _world-shattering_ punch against the doorframe and it flies backwards, torn straight off of its hinges, and Gordon, dimly remembers that _right, right, Dr. Coomer is -- basically a fucking boxing cyborg_ \--

"What the _fuck_ ," Gordon whispers, anyway.

"My whole arm is numb, Gordon!"

"Okay, okay, that's not a good thing --"

"Focus," Bubby hisses.

The first thing that Gordon notices is that the room is dark -- darker than it has any right to be, despite the pouring rain and the thundering lightning, dark like the light had been physically sucked out of it with a vacuum cleaner, dark like _Gordon sticks his hand inside and he can't see it anymore_ and a heavy pressure almost threatens to suck him in and he has to physically _pull_ his hand out of whatever is in that room. Panic rises in his throat and he thinks _betrayal soldiers arm chopped off_ \--

"Y-you guys ready?" Gordon asks, feeling his nerves spark hot with adrenaline.

"What about Joshua?" Bubby says, and Gordon curses. He couldn't -- he couldn't ask -- oh my God, even if the world is scripted that doesn't mean that he stops loving his fucking _son_ \--

"Gordon, you should stay," Dr. Coomer says, putting a hand on Gordon's shoulder. "You need to watch your boy! Bubby and I will find Tommy."

Gordon thinks of --

\-- his team, a security guard, a world, _his_ world --

\-- and looks at Dr. Coomer and Bubby, and despite their composed expressions, he _knows_ that they risk just as much nonexistence as he does --

"Don't be fucking stupid," Bubby scowls. "You have a son. We have each other, for -- however much that counts for."

"I trust you guys," Gordon says, and he makes careful eye contact with Bubby, who looks surprised before he tears his gaze away, a grimace heavy on his face. "I just -- I know we've all fucked up, but I trust you. Just -- just promise me, stay alive, make sure..."

"We'll keep Joshua safe," Dr. Coomer promises.

"I guess we will," Bubby mutters. And then, almost as an afterthought -- "I'm telling you, don't be fucking _stupid_."

Gordon chokes out a laugh. "I -- I won't."

"Good luck, Gordon!"

Gordon steps inside. He faintly hears Bubby yell something else, too, but the world is muffled around him, like the Void is swallowing up color and light and sound. He moves like he's moving through honey; every step takes more effort than it ought to. He exhales an anxious breath. When he tries to inhale, he chokes on what feels like water, instead.

He immediately brings his hands up to his mouth and nose, looks backwards, he hadn't taken a big enough breath for this --

The door is a pinprick of light in the distance that slides shut to pure darkness, and then the distinct sound of a lock clicking echoes through the room and Gordon thinks _fuck, fuck, fuck, again_ \--

A dog barks. The sound echoes like a gunshot in a ventilation shaft.

"Y-you, you -- Mr. Freeman, you _really_ shouldn't be here."

\---

Tommy dreams.

Tommy dreams of -- color and light and sound. The gentle flow of green trickles down his prefrontal cortex; the bright flash of blue dances up his spinal cord; voices whisper like songs in his skull. He smiles, gently, despite the conflicting sensations. They remind him of his friends, who he cares about -- who he loves -- very, very much.

Tommy dreams of -- a game, a Game that his father taught him to play. After the Resonance Cascade tore apart the first world that they'd all spawned in, his father made a new world with rules, with restrictions, with low-poly buildings and people that all looked and thought and spoke the same, and let Tommy play in it as long as Tommy followed the script that'd been so carefully constructed for its occupants. Tommy watched his players win the Game. He didn't like the script very much -- it made them all angry, and mean, and _bad_ because they didn't know how to _be_ anything else.

Tommy dreams of -- a seed, a seed that he learned how to plant and how to raise and how to let go. The ideas are his own, of course; it's hard for him to draw on things that he hasn't experienced personally. But the world is growing, and he's watching it grow, and he's feeling warmth swell in his chest every time he sees his friends smile.

Tommy dreams of --

A black flash. Sunkist barks. The sound echoes, and Tommy's eyes snap open, and he sits up to see Mr. Freeman, stumbling around in the Void, choking on the heavy darkness.

"Y-you, you -- Mr. Freeman, you _really_ shouldn't be here," Tommy stammers, and he climbs out of bed, quietly telling Sunkist to stand down. He concentrates. His eyes flash bright yellow, and Gordon heaves in a strangled breath, and then stares at Tommy, a deer caught in the headlights.

"Wh -- who -- Tommy, what's wrong with your _eyes_?" Gordon asks, incredulously.

"N-Nothing," Tommy sputters, defensively. "It's -- it's what they do."

"Okay, okay, never mind," Gordon says, shaking his head. "I just -- oh my God, Tommy, what's _happening?_ "

"Well, uh, Mr. Freeman -- I think things are breaking!" Tommy says, a nervous smile on his face. What was -- wasn't that obvious?

"That's not what I meant!"

"Well -- maybe ask me what you meant?"

"The world, it's --" Mr. Freeman sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and spits out the next words like he's spitting out poison. "Benrey -- Benrey told me that you created the fucking _universe_ , and that he _has_ to be bad, or -- or -- I don't even know, man! I swear to God, I need to know what's going on, or I'm going to fucking _explode_."

Tommy thinks for a heartbeat -- two.

"Okay," he says, simply.

"You can't just -- I mean, wait, what?" Mr. Freeman stammers, already having been poised to argue. Tommy stifles a laugh. Too much time spent talking with the rest of the Science Team.

"The -- the Resonance Cascade destroyed your original universe," Tommy explains, an embarrassed tone creeping into his voice. "And -- and so, uh, my dad, he made the Game! And the script, but, well, nobody liked that, and then you won, and --"

"You -- you made a _new_ universe."

"Yes!" Tommy smiles brightly. "Wow, Mr. Freeman, you catch on quickly."

"But the script?"

"Why -- Mr. Freeman, why would I script the universe when I knew that you wouldn't like that?"

"The -- the G-Man, your dad, he didn't seem to have any issues --"

"Well, I'm not my dad," Tommy says, firmly. "And -- and anyway, you're basically family, too."

Mr. Freeman's jaw drops, before he catches himself in the act, trying his best to recompose himself, to Tommy's chagrin. He'd thought that he'd made that obvious -- maybe he'd have to express it in other ways? It would be a problem for, well, after --

"Then the world," Mr. Freeman says, starting to pace in circles now that the heaviness of the Void wasn't weighing on his limbs anymore. "The -- it's breaking because, because --"

"It's very, very hard for two universes to, to exist so closely together," Tommy says. He holds up both of his hands, makes an elaborate, dramatic performance out of interlacing his fingers together. "Bad things happen -- nothing's up to standard, not even OSHA standards, even though I try to do everything according to what I read!"

"And Benrey?"

"Benrey is very, very scared, Mr. Freeman." Tommy sighs -- he'd always known that giving people _roles_ was a terrible idea. "My dad -- my dad and I, we can't get rid of the Game, not until Benrey lets us -- pull them out, the same way we pulled the Science Team and Darnold and Forzen out. I don't want to destroy them, too -- that'd be terrible, Mr. Freeman. We've -- we've destroyed enough, I think."

A mess of emotions rushes through Mr. Freeman's face -- too many for Tommy to even try to comprehend. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like he's trying to settle on what to say. Destroy Benrey, maybe? Save the new universe? But Tommy couldn't -- Benrey was a friend, even if they didn't believe themselves to be one --

"You fucking create universes?" is what finally spills out of Mr. Freeman's mouth.

Tommy furrows his eyebrows. "I -- I think I explained that?"

"No, no, _what_?" He's got this panicked expression on his face that he tries to cover with his hands. "Oh my God. Y-you, you and the guy, your dad, you guys fucking --"

"Mr. Freeman, there's no time for an existential crisis," Tommy says, patting Mr. Freeman firmly on the shoulder. "We have a lot to do! I want to go home, too."

"W-what -- no, no, we can't just brush over this, you're literally fucking _God_?"

"That's obscene, Mr. Freeman!"

A startled laugh bursts involuntarily from Mr. Freeman's mouth, and Tommy can't help but smile, too. He'd -- he knew that Mr. Freeman would come around to the idea, eventually. The universe had been made for the people in it, after all.

Mr. Freeman sighs. He shakes out his ruined ponytail and redoes it more tightly, so that his hair actually stays out of his face. He takes off his shattered glasses and tucks them away into his jacket. He puts his hand on Tommy's shoulder, returning the gesture.

"Tell me what I need to do," he says.

\---

Gordon wakes up, tries to get to his feet, but an immediate wave of dizziness passes over him that almost sends him back down to his knees and he can _hear_ Benrey's voice pulsing in his head like a heartbeat, buzzing like the static of flies --

"Don't you fuckin' -- don't fuckin' move, don't be a shithead baby, don't _fucking_ leave this time," Benrey growls.

Gordon looks up to see -- Benrey, larger than life, their limbs twisted, their mouth a mess of sharp teeth and sharp angles and a too-wide scowl that drips blue Sweet Voice down their chin, their eyes shifting from two-three-five-seven-none, glowing in the darkness of the tall chamber bathed in gore and viscera and blood and Gordon, almost instinctively, tries to steady his right hand with his left but there's nothing there, now, he doesn't even have his prosthetic anymore --

Benrey's eyes stare down at Gordon like they're trying to bore a hole through his skull. Their long-suffering groan echoes through his head like the roar of gunfire.

"I'm the only left -- _auuuuuuuughh_ , this sucks, this is so suck!" Benrey yells. The chamber echoes with their voice. Blood washes up against the walls like tidal waves. Gordon feels the ground _shifting_ underneath him -- flashes of purple-black polygons creep up the rocky walls, the blood he's sitting in doesn't even ripple when he gets to his knees. "Don't know -- _ugghhhh_ , you don't get it, don't _fuckin'_ move I swear --"

"I -- Benrey, I do get it, I know about the -- the script, the Cascade, everything!"

"Stupid fuckin' -- Feetman, you never had to fuckin' listen to it --"

"That doesn't mean -- just because it _used_ to be you doesn't mean it still _has_ to be you!"

"'M so fuckin' -- I just wanted to chill, man! I just wanted to have a good time, and be -- be friends, but _auuuuuughh_ \--"

"We are!"

Benrey's mouth twists. "Then -- then why are you trying to stop me? Bro? I have -- I have the Game, now, I _own_ the Game, now, I can do -- _anything_. I can stop the -- the script, I can stop Tommy, I _own_ it."

"The Game is what forced you to -- to become _this,_ why do you even _want_ it?"

"S'more fun than going out _there_ ," Benrey jeers, and then the walls around them -- _collapse,_ revealing the vast space of Xen outside of it, cracks in the sky providing glimpses to a universe pouring with rain, a universe of purple-black lightning strikes and skeletal shadows and Dr. Coomer and Bubby screeching down the road in a hijacked car, and Joshua, and a ruined apartment --

"Benrey, you don't get it!" Gordon yells, and Benrey's eyes slit in confusion. "You're -- you don't even have the script to blame, this time, you -- you're fucking making your _own_ choices!"

"And _what?_ Doesn't -- doesn't mean I'm like _you,_ stupid baby, listening to _stupid_ Tommy and thinking -- thinking you don't need _me_ \--"

"You're just as human as I am!"

"I'm -- I'm _not_ fuckin' human, and it's not like I _want_ to be," Benrey snarls, and then their face _shifts_ and they're laughing, static explosions in Gordon's skull. "I'm not even _real!_ You got -- you got to be good and you made me be bad and I was a great cool but now I _wanna_ be bad and you're making me -- saying I'm wrong --"

"It's all -- you don't have to _want_ something just because you think you _know_ it --"

"And you -- you, dumb baby, losin' your fuckin' mind over your dumb arm, _auuuuugh Dr. Coomer Bubby help me_ , that's _boring_ shit, that's no _fun_ , it's so fail, it's --"

"Benrey, you're being fucking _irrational._ "

"Like -- like telling you, stupid, like being scared of having fuckin' nothing is _irrational._ "

"You're -- you -- there's more to you than being _mean_ \--"

"S'not what I was taught!"

"It's what you can learn!"

"Stop, stop, I hate you, I _hate_ you, and you're supposed to hate me!" Benrey pounds their fist against the floor of the chamber and Gordon hears the earth splitting, the rush of blood as it pours out of hundreds of thousands of cracks spreading like lightning through the floor and he steadies himself shin-deep in the flat, stagnant water.

"How am I -- I'm not scripted, Benrey, I don't have to do what I'm supposed to anymore --"

"You -- you have to, I'm the _villain!_ "

"I'm _choosing_ not to!"

Benrey's eyes widen --

\-- and Gordon is _falling,_ the world crumbling around him in a burst of purple and black and rock and blood and bioluminescent, pink Sweet Voice and he hears a sharp gasp, then his own scream, and he _clips_ through the floor and stares through a red film at the yawning, gaping Void of space and stars and floating islands around him --

Something catches him.

He forces himself to wrench his eyes open, struggling to breathe past the pounding of his chest, the pulsing heartbeat ringing in his ears.

He's -- in Benrey's hands, staring up at them the same way they're staring down at him, and they look larger than life but their face has stabilized, their form no longer glitching at the edges, pink-and-blue Sweet Voice running down the corners of their mouth, exhaled into singing bubbles that fill the space around them. Their eyes are wide. They have an unreadable expression on their face.

It takes Gordon a moment to work up the nerve to speak. "Uh -- B-Benrey, you good, man?"

Benrey snaps to attention. "Huh?"

"I asked if --"

"Uh, yeah, of course, should be -- should be fuckin' asking if little baby Feetman is good," Benrey answers preemptively, too quickly, like they're hardly even thinking about what they're saying. "You said -- you said you can't --"

"You're pretty fucked up, Benrey," Gordon says, and Benrey's expression immediately drops into a contemptuous sneer. "But -- just because the G-Man wanted you to follow a fucking script doesn't mean -- that you still _have_ to."

Benrey blinks owlishly. "Wha?"

"You can -- you can be better than the script, y'know?"

"But I -- but I go out there, and the fuckin' -- Tommy's gonna make me be _bad_ \--"

"Tommy -- just because he made the universe doesn't mean that he hates you, too."

"He has -- he fuckin' has to, I'm the villain."

"There's _no more script_ ," Gordon says, slowly. "It's -- the Game's _over,_ Benrey. I can't win an argument with you, but -- I can ask you to, to trust me, and I'll trust _you_ not to be bad again."

Benrey blinks, slowly. The space around them -- _untextures_.

When Gordon opens his eyes again, Benrey is their normal size. The two of them are floating gently through the ether; Benrey's holding onto their shoulder and their left hand. Bioluminescent plants and dead alien life forms and chunks of broken rock float by them harmlessly. Benrey's mouth is laced with bright, glowing green.

"You're sure," they say, cautiously.

"You're falling apart," Gordon replies, instead, and sure enough, Benrey's features -- are warping, just like the world around them is. The longer he looks, the less focused they seem to get. Benrey scowls.

"Nuh-uh."

"If you don't -- the Game is falling apart, Benrey."

"Nyeahnyeahnyeah -- I can, I can keep it together."

"You don't need to."

"Wha -- you said -- you said, though, there's nothing out there."

"Well -- I lied," Gordon says, gently. "There's -- _us_."

A heartbeat -- two -- of silence.

"I'm sorry," Benrey says, simply, pink-and-blue Sweet Voice spilling out of their mouth almost involuntarily. Then, a smirk -- "I'm gonna have to follow you then."

And Gordon laughs -- laughs hard, feels Benrey's hand tighten in his, laughs until he's crying, and he doesn't think he's ever laughed harder in his entire fucking _life,_ and then there's --

\---

Tommy's eyes snap open.

The lights in his apartment all flicker on simultaneously. Sunkist lazily blinks himself awake from where he's curled up at Tommy's side. The phone on his bedside table is vibrating with a call, even though he's sure that he'd turned it off before he descended into the Void. He answers, anyway. He'd felt -- he'd felt the Game shift, and he knows --

"You've done well, Tommy," his dad says, his voice ringing in Tommy's skull.

Tommy sighs, exhausted, but he can't help himself from swelling at the praise, his free hand already flapping in the air, a smile inadvertently rising wide to his face. "Did -- did I?"

"Your world... it's certainly holding itself together."

He laughs. "But -- but dad, it wasn't all me, you know, it was also Mr. Freeman, Mr. Coomer, Mr. Bubby -- and Sunkist, Sunkist helped --"

"Our... antagonist seemed to have made a decision of their own, as well."

"I'm so, so proud of them! As proud... as proud as..."

"As proud as I am of you right now, my son?"

He gasps, his eyes shining, smiling as widely as he thinks he possibly can. Rays of sunlight filter in through his shutters. Outside his window, the clouds are starting to part.

\---

Tommy scatters birdseed in the park, Sunkist lying lazily at his side instead of chasing after the pigeons that'd been so tantalizingly flying in and out of his vision. People are starting to come outside, again, as the shin-deep water drains from the streets and the dark rainclouds dissipate into the distance. Sunlight trickles through the steadily-lightening sky. The smell of petrichor is heavy in the air. Tommy has his rain boots on, for when he'd inevitably have to trudge through the dirty grass to pick up --

The air in the park _shifts_ , and oh, there they are. Mr. Freeman, lying in the grass, blinks himself awake in the warm sunlight -- and then scrambles to his feet, realizing that he's essentially lying in a field of cold, waterlogged mud. Benrey is out cold on the ground next to him, dressed in their security guard uniform, still covered in blood and dirt from the Game -- a bit of mud wouldn't make much of a difference.

"Mr. Freeman!" Tommy calls, waving at him as he wades through the field towards them. Sunkist perks up, seeing two new friends to play with, and dashes through the virtual swamp much-less-carefully, splashing mud all over himself and leaving dirty pawprints on Gordon's shirt as he gets up on his hind legs to greet him.

"Tommy!" Gordon yells back, smiling even as he pushes Sunkist away. "C'mon -- down, Sunkist, Sunkist _down_ \--"

"H-how was it?" Tommy practically beams as he runs up to squeeze Gordon in a hug. "I -- I thought that -- I mean, I knew that you could --"

"It was -- I don't even _know,_ man," Gordon shakily laughs, running a shaky hand through his hair and finally pulling it out of its soaked ponytail. "I mean -- Benrey --"

"They'll be fine," Tommy says, confidently. "I'm sure of it!"

"God, they're always fine. I don't even know why I'm worried," Gordon says, breathing out a sigh of relief. He looks over to stare down at Benrey, unconscious on the ground. Black, wiry hair sticks out messily from underneath their helmet. They look -- ashen, for sure, but it's nothing that a couple iron supplements and a few good meals wouldn't be able to fix. The dark circles under their eyes seem to almost be a permanent fixture on their face.

Their face is oddly relaxed, without any of the contempt or amusement in it that Gordon's used to seeing. _They look -- almost_ nice _like this,_ Gordon catches himself thinking. _Maybe_ \--

"What's wrong, Mr. Freeman?" Tommy asks, tilting his head curiously to the side.

_Maybe I do wanna kiss._

"They came out shorter than I expected them to be," Gordon says, instead.

Benrey's eyes snap open at that, immediately narrowing to look up at Gordon, a sneer and retort already on the tip of their tongue, and yep, that's the Benrey that Gordon's used to seeing. "What'd you say -- little Feetman? Y'know, I can see your feet from down here, the FeetScanner said they weren't any good and you -- you know, it was right --"

"You are shorter than what I expected, though?" Tommy chimes in, smiling, and Benrey's look of shock at that is enough to send Gordon into another fit of laughter, trying to keep himself from doubling over as Benrey grumbles and complains and tries to get to their feet only for Sunkist to speed over and immediately pounce on them, knocking them backwards, and now Tommy's laughing, too, as he tries to pry Sunkist off of Benrey's lap --

When Gordon finally wipes the tears out of his eyes, he sees Benrey sitting bemusedly in the grass, their helmet knocked askew, mud splattered all over their clothes and hands and helmet. He offers his hand to them to help them up while Tommy tries to hold back a frantically-excited Sunkist.

Benrey takes it.

Gordon notices them almost -- tentatively -- smile.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this!! this was a lot of fun to write -- i used a lot of my favorite topics/tropes (predestination, a couple chekhov's guns, perspective shifting, stuff like that) and i love all of the weirdly cosmic-horror stuff that hlvrai kind of Touches On but never really Goes Into, and so i kind of just... smashed everything together and decided "my city now" and it became literally the longest fic i've ever written. i need a nap.
> 
> tysm to [@pintsizedpeanut](https://pintsizedpeanut.tumblr.com/) for beta'ing for me even though she doesn't know anything about hlvrai LOL... if you ever want to talk about this or about hlvrai in general, my tumblr's [@shachihata](https://shachihata.tumblr.com/)! feel free to hit me up!
> 
> some minor notes, in no particular order:
> 
> 1\. the working title for this fic was HLVRAIFUSLA (half-life vr but the ai are in a fucked-up slice-of-life anime). obviously, this didn't stick. sometimes i wish it did.  
> 2\. i was super, super tempted to tag this fic as "blasphemy." i just think it would've been really funny  
> 3\. these weren't addressed explicitly, but in terms of the sweet voice, bright red means "danger" and pink-to-blue means "i care about you."  
> 4\. it's not the main focus which is why i didn't tag it, but dr. coomer and bubby are absolutely like, A Thing. i hope the undertones were clear enough LOL  
> 5\. the soundtrack i was listening to while writing this includes teddy hyde's [sex with a ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGKcT5vlRkE), john's [cala lula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrQV8CQXV70) and [return](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScW_5013YWY), and surii's [beaver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NArXe-Wg2D0)!


End file.
